


Ground Zero

by TakingOverMidnight3482



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Don't Pick Up Hitch Hikers at the Gas Station Kids, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Lance and Keith are idiots, M/M, Slow Burn, Trans Keith (Voltron), but we been knew, this is like ten months in the making
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 20:54:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28891686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TakingOverMidnight3482/pseuds/TakingOverMidnight3482
Summary: “I know,” the dude was whispering, and Lance chanced a glance back. His head was in his free hand now. “I know you wanted me to be the best man, I’m sorry, bro, but I just can’t-”“Nope,” Lance said out loud, startling when he realized he had spoken it. The dude turned, furrowing his eyebrows at him, and oh shit, he was hot. Without thinking, Lance reached out and plucked the phone from Hot Dude’s hand. “Hi, Shiro, was it?”“Um…yes? Who is this?”“What’s up, the name’s Lance. Your bro here needs a ride to Portland, Oregon? I just so happen to be heading that way.”~~Or, Keith needs a ride across the country, Lance just happens to be going that way, and two strangers inevitably end up becoming much closer than they ever anticipated.
Relationships: Curtis/Shiro (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 35
Kudos: 228





	Ground Zero

**Author's Note:**

> I literally started writing this months ago and you can blame my girlfriend for it. Also it's 2:45 in the morning and I have no idea if anything in coherent anymore so if there's issues I'll fix them tomorrow lol 
> 
> Also it occurred to me I didn't mention Coran ONCE in this fic so just assume he's Allura's uncle (she's also not in this fic, just mentioned, but still). Too exhausted to figure out a way to squeeze him in, sorry Coran, love u
> 
> TW for mentions of transphobia, panic attacks, car accidents, and animal abuse (nothing graphic or gorey for any of them, this is just in case)

On the far tip of the coast of Maine was a small town that was known to locals and anyone who could get their hands on a map made before the 80’s as Mattawamkeag. It had three churches, one grocery store, a gas station with one pump, miles of unused railroad tracks, and some of the most beautiful forests in the country.

Most of the homes were handmade, log cabins and pine wood, and everyone had at least a vegetable patch, if not a full mini farm on their property. The best ice cream shop was hidden behind the gas station, and you only knew about it if you knew the ins and outs of the town. The river was made for swimming and fishing, and in the winter, there were bogs a plenty for ice skating.

Snow fell up to ten feet high some years, but in the summer, the humidity in the air was so thick you could scoop it up in a glass and drink it. The schoolhouse on the edge of town was bigger than it had been in the past, and the locals made sure you knew it. It sweated in the heat of the summer, boards weeping and signs peeling off the walls to hit the melting pavement.

It was here that Lance found himself on the start of his road trip around the country, because it was the farthest East you could go before you hit Canada, and it was the last town on the map that he could see. He’d stayed in a hotel outside of town, a little worn down, but quaint. It was nothing like the city his college had been in, and reminded him more of his old town in Florida more than anything.

The locals were nice, if not a little odd, and he’d had no problem finding his way to the ice cream shop and the gas station. He was sitting in his car now, licking hurriedly at his mint chip before it could melt in his lap, and staring at the roadmap that would take him to Vermont.

This hadn’t been what Lance initially planned to do with his summer, but he had the money, he had the time, and he sure as hell had the itch to travel. The minivan was his brother’s, borrowed for the summer under the threat of beheading if it so much as got a scratch on it, and he’d already removed the back seats on the off-chance that he couldn’t find anywhere to sleep some nights. His suitcase, duffel bag, tent, and sleeping bag were rolled up behind the passenger seat and strapped in with a bungee cord so they didn’t roll, and his cooler was tucked safely on the floor in front of the passenger seat, the snacks in the seat themselves.

Lance glanced over his assortment, hummed, and folded up the map with little muttering. He grabbed his phone and wallet and headed inside the gas station convenience store, intent on buying some jerky and maybe a family sized pack of Doritos (cool ranch, of course, because he wasn’t a monster).

At the counter was a bored looking cashier, flipping through a magazine, and in the wine and beer section there was a dude his age, dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and hand on his hip, the other holding a phone to his ear. Lance couldn’t help but eavesdrop, but only because he was like five feet away, okay?

“I’m sorry, Shiro, I’m not gonna…I can’t afford it. And I know you can’t afford it after the expenses for the ceremony, so don’t even try me like that.” A pause, and then a sigh. Lance studied the jerky very carefully. “Red won’t make it, she’s too old. Her motor doesn’t run like it used to, and it’d cost me at least two grand to fix her. The flights to Portland are way too much.”

Lance frowned – Portland, Maine, was only a few hours away. So the guy was definitely talking about Portland, Oregon. He picked up the barbecue jerky, sniffed the package hesitantly, and set it back down. Jalapeño it was.

“I know,” the dude was whispering, and Lance chanced a glance back. His head was in his free hand now. “I know you wanted me to be the best man, I’m sorry, bro, but I just can’t-”

“Nope,” Lance said out loud, startling when he realized he had spoken it. The dude turned, furrowing his eyebrows at him, and oh shit, he was hot. Without thinking, Lance reached out and plucked the phone from Hot Dude’s hand. “Hi, Shiro, was it?”

“Um…yes? Who is this?”

“What’s up, the name’s Lance. Your bro here needs a ride to Portland, Oregon? I just so happen to be heading that way.”

“You…excuse me, who are you?”

“Give me my fucking phone back!” the dude snapped.

Lance held out the phone, eyebrows lifted, and hit the speaker button. “He needs a ride, right?”

“Yes?” Shiro said in a questioning tone.

“I’m going to Portland. I’m taking a road trip around the landlocked country this summer, and the first leg of it takes me through the top states to Oregon, where I swing down to Cali after. So I can take him.”

Hot Dude was staring at him now, jaw hanging. “I don’t even know you!” he protested. “You could be a murderer! Or I could be one!”

“You’re not a murderer, Keith,” Shiro deadpanned, and Lance grinned – he liked the man already.

Hot Guy – Keith – scowled and crossed his arms. “Not yet I’m not.”

Lance tilted his head. “Come on, my Mama always told me never to leave someone hanging if I can help. So let me help, dude, you can’t miss your bro’s wedding. When is it?”

“A little less than two weeks,” Shiro informed him. “We were supposed to be able to fly him out, but…there were some complications. Money wise.”

Lance didn’t pry – he hadn’t earned that right. “I feel that, dude. It only takes a couple days to drive straight through, so that’s more than enough time with two people driving!”

“Are you sure?” Shiro asked. “We’ll pay you once you get here, for gas, of course, and a place to-"

“Oh my god do I not get a say in this?” Keith demanded, and maybe he wasn’t as hot as Lance had thought. “I’m the one who would be spending time in a car with some rando who offers rides to strangers he’s listening in on.”

“To be fair, it’s a small building,” Lance pointed out. “And I’m not a stranger, we’ve officially known each other for like five minutes now. I’m at least an acquaintance. A blip on the radar.”

“You’re barely a speck on the radar,” Keith grumbled, snatching his phone up from Lance’s hand. “No way. Shiro, I can’t believe you’re even considering this, you’re always telling me to be cautious.”

Shiro hummed. “I know, I know. But he seems…okay. Besides, aren’t you a black belt? And skilled in knife throwing? And also I once watched you take down a man three times your size because he grabbed you by the shoulder.”

Okay, maybe he was hot again.

“Don’t give away all my secrets, Shiro,” Keith muttered. He side-eyed Lance, probably taking in his cargo shorts and his “Camp Know Where” t-shirt (copyright Stranger Things) and his stupid assortment of jerky that he was still holding. His shoulders relaxed a little. “If I die, it’s on you.”

“I’ll take that chance,” Shiro said, chuckling a little. “And Lance?”

Lance perked up at his name, tilting his head. “Yes sir?”

“You’re welcome to stay for the wedding, if you’d like.”

Lance grinned. “Maybe just the after party, but thank you.”

“Call me at the state line.”

“Will do. Bye,” Keith said. He hung up the phone and faced Lance warily. “I’ll have to swing by my apartment, pick up some stuff.”

Lance shrugged around the jerky. “Meet me back here. I can wait for a bit. Gives me more time to check out my jerky options.”

Keith gnawed on his lip, and Lance could sense him reconsidering. He grinned. “Kidding. Seriously, just meet me back here dude. I have a tent and camping shit, so in case we don’t find a hotel we’re good there. Just bring clothes and a sleeping bag and whatever else you might need. I’ll wait.”

The look that Keith was giving him was wary. “You’re sure?”

“Positive dude.”

Keith nodded, they exchanged numbers quickly, and then he left, presumably without whatever he had even come here for. Lance finished buying up his snacks, grabbing some sour patch kids out of irony (maybe he could share with Keith) before going to pay.

“You’re taking Kogane across the country?” the cashier drawled as he scanned Lance’s Food Network magazine.

Lance paused, glancing up from where he’d been rifling through his wallet. “Uh…yeah, why?”

The dude shrugged. “Dunno. Heard some things about him. He spends a lotta time alone. Year below me in highschool, he was one of those emo kids. S’all.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Dude, we were all emo kids, get over it.”

He tossed a twenty on the counter, ignoring the change of a whopping seven cents, and trudged back out to his minivan. He spent the next several minutes shifting things around, setting the snacks and the cooler just behind the divider instead of in the front seat, and he strapped them down well so they wouldn’t slide out of reach.

Lance grabbed a Sprite out of the cooler and twisted the cap off, taking a swig before going through his Spotify and picking out his most emo songs, or at least, his 21 Pilots and Panic! at the Disco type songs. Even if the cashier was exaggerating, no one ever said no to Panic!.

He paused, then threw in a couple Beyoncé songs just in case.

~~

**_Day One_ **

“Is this _your_ kind of music?” Keith asked in disgust as a Taylor Swift song reared it’s ugly head on Lance’s shuffled playlist.

Lance flinched, eyes flickering to his phone with a frown of betrayal. “Uh…no?”

Keith’s raised eyebrow was unimpressed at best. “You wanna rethink that?”

“Listen, sometimes you’re just in the mood to listen to T Swizzle sing about burning pictures of an ex,” Lance said, reaching a hand over to skip the song. He was a little irritated – Keith hadn’t said a word about his playlist yet, and they’d been in the car for nearly an hour. “Sorry that one song ruined your whole image of me.”

The song flipped to something in French and Lance gripped the wheel again, frowning at the road and glancing every now and again at his GPS. For a few minutes, they were quiet, the sound of the road grinding under them. It was sprinkling, and Lance had the windshield wipers set to low, a gentle _thwip-thwip_ every twenty seconds.

“Sorry,” Keith said.

Lance spared him a glance. He was looking out the window, chin settled on his palm and free fingers tapping restlessly on his knee. “It’s okay,” Lance said, dragging his eyes back to the wet pavement.

“No, I…” Keith sighed, and from his peripheral vision, Lance could see him drag a hand down his face. “That was mean. Especially when you’re-” he gestured at Lance halfheartedly “-doing all this for me.”

Lance snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself, dude. I was already taking a cross-country trip this summer, that was real. I just…felt bad, is all. You shouldn’t miss your brother’s wedding just ‘cause you can’t afford the flight. That’d be shit.”

Keith hummed so quietly Lance almost missed it. “Still. Shouldn’t make fun of your music. Even if it is lame now and again.”

Lance cracked a grin. “Valid. This is my road trip list though, so it has literally every song you can think of on it.”

He could practically feel Keith squinting at him. “MCR?”

Lance lifted his phone off the grip and handed it over. “Feel free to browse, man.”

“Uh…thanks.” Keith took the phone, fingers brushing over Lance’s, and Lance had to swallow as he pulled his hand back.

Something about that touch was too personal for a guy he’d met less than two hours prior. He kept quiet, turned the windshield wipers up a notch as the rain picked up, and snorted as the G note rang out.

Classic.

~~

“What do you want to drink?”

Lance looked up from the gas pump, fingers flexing on the handle. Keith was leaning on the top of Blue, looking at Lance expectantly. “What?”

Keith gestured to the Sunoco behind them. “Drink? I’m grabbing a Gatorade. What do you want? My treat.”

“You don’t have to do that, I’ve got drinks in the cooler,” Lance said, shaking his head.

“Yeah, water and Coke,” Keith said with a dismissive snort. Something about the glimmer in his eyes made Lance’s stomach flip. “Real interesting. Come on, you don’t want _anything?_ ”

Lance paused, glanced at the steadily climbing numbers on the pump, and then looked back at Keith. He had an eyebrow raised and was holding his wallet up now. Lance huffed a laugh and shook his head. “Yeah, an Arnold Palmer would be great. Thanks.”

“Knew it,” Keith chuckled, but he turned on his heel and headed into the convenience store, leaving Lance to turn back to staring at the pouring rain and wet highway ahead of them.

They’d left Maine behind a while ago and were nearing about halfway through Vermont. At this rate, Lance assumed they’d be able to reach their destination in less than four days, a little longer if they decided to stop fully for a night or two in some places. He was kind of bummed – he’d be missing out on a lot of the sights in between Maine and Oregon, but he also didn’t want to make Keith miss his brother’s wedding, especially after he’d been the one to offer to take him in the first place.

Lance knew what it was like to miss out on something with a family member. Not in quite the same way, of course, but his mind couldn’t help but flash to losing his grandfather the previous year. He hadn’t been there, had been stuck at school, and hadn’t been able to do more than call in his final days. It had stung, and being there would have made all the difference to both Lance and his family. He couldn’t afford it, so he couldn’t go home until the funeral. 

Of course, Keith was going to a happy event, but Lance couldn’t bring himself to ignore someone he could potentially help. Especially not when he knew what it felt like to really miss the important moments.

“They didn’t have Arnold Palmer but I bought a lemonade and an iced tea and I figured you could probably mix them together cause that’s…basically the same thing, right?”

Lance bit back a grin and looked back at Keith, removing the nozzle from the gas tank as it clicked it’s release. “Sure, if you think Ho-Hos are the same as Ding Dongs.”

Keith’s furrowed brow was, frankly, adorable. “Are they…not?”

“Oh my god no, they’re nothing alike.”

Keith glanced over his shoulder at the shop. “I could go return them and-”

“Dude, I’m kidding,” Lance laughed. He walked around the car and took the bag from Keith gingerly, keeping his smile relaxed. He slapped the keys into Keith’s still outstretched hand and the man jumped. “Your turn.”

Keith stared down at the keys like he wasn’t quite seeing them, and for a moment Lance wondered if he’d done something wrong. Then-

“Is this…a minion key chain? In hula drag?”

“Um.”

“I take back everything I said, your taste is _terrible_.”

“It was a gift from my niece! She’s five, sue me!”

Keith clutched the keys in his fist and looked up with a smirk. “It’s adorable, don’t worry. I won’t tell. Maybe.”

He walked around to the driver’s side, leaving Lance to stand by the passenger door with the grocery bag dangling from his fingers and his mouth hanging open.

~~

The rain was a steady downpour now, to the point where the lights were reflecting off the road and Lance could barely see in front of him. He’d slowed to 40 miles per hour nearly ten minutes ago, a truly heinous crime on the highway, and now he sighed, shoulders already painfully tense. “Maybe-”

“We’re three miles out from Pittsburgh,” Keith said, and Lance chanced a sideways glance to see him scrolling through his phone. “There’s a Motel 6 in about a mile and a half. I can book it.”

He looked up to find Lance just staring, and in the dim lights of the street lamps, Lance could swear his cheeks went red. “What?”

Lance returned his gaze to the road, squinting into the pouring rain. “I don’t know. I thought you’d just want to push through, get to Oregon as soon as possible.”

“I’m not going to make you drive in a dangerous situation,” Keith whispered, and something in his voice was so…broken, so upset, that Lance didn’t quite know what to say. “Least I can do is book a double bed motel room.”

“Okay. Which exit?”

“Upcoming one. Hang a right once we hit the light.”

Lance shifted lanes, eyes flipping between the rearview and the lane in front of him. The highway wasn’t busy by any means, but he wasn’t chancing it. The exit came up quickly and he took it with caution, knowing from experience that Pittsburgh exits tended to be windy and have sharp curves.

“Right at the light,” Keith murmured, fingers flying across his phone’s keyboard. “And then it’s a mile down, across the street from McDonalds.”

Lance snorted, pulling the van to a halt at the red light and waiting patiently for a few other cars to go before turning right. “As is everything in this country.”

Keith didn’t laugh, but Lance could see the smile from the corner of his eyes.

~~

The room was musty, but so was every motel room Lance had ever been in. It didn’t reek of cigarettes, which was a huge bonus, and the two double beds were made up neatly. He held the door for Keith as he passed and then clicked it shut behind them. “Have a preference?”

Keith turned, eyeing him for a moment, and then nodded to the bed closest to the window, furthest from the door. “If you don’t mind.”

Lance shrugged, kicking his soaking wet shoes off onto the rug next to the first bed. “Nope. S’why I asked, dumbass.”

Keith rolled his eyes but didn’t retort, which Lance figured was progress. For a moment, they stayed quiet, removing their wet shoes and socks and going through their bags for dry pajamas. Lance was certain he’d tossed a couple of packs of fruit gummies in his bag, and they were probably smushed on the bottom, but he was determined to find them. It was as he was searching that Keith spoke.

“Thank you.”

Lance looked up, elbow deep in his bag and wet hair dripping into his eyes. “Huh?”

Keith was holding a dark grey t-shirt in his hands, his own mullet-y hair dripping onto his shoulders. He didn’t look at Lance. “Thank you. I never really said it. I know you wanted to stop in each state more. I mean…that’s the point of a road trip, right?”

He didn’t wait for a response, just turned his back on Lance and shrugged out of his sopping wet shirt to change into the clean, dry one he was holding.

Lance couldn’t help but stare – Keith’s back was _toned._ His arms had been tight in his shirt to begin with, so Lance knew that the guy was fit, but holy shit, the guy was jacked just enough in all the right places. Lance’s throat went a little dry.

“Anyway,” Keith said, his voice muffled as the shirt got a little tangled on his head, which Lance found endearing. “I just wanted to say…if you still want to explore some of the cities we pass through…”

He turned back around, draping the wet shirt over the back of the desk chair nearest him and then finally looking up at Lance, a sheepish smile on his face. “It only takes a couple days to get there, and we have a full week and a half to get to Portland. I don’t want to ruin your trip.”

Lance blinked, startled, and then realized he was still soaking wet. He stood, pulling off his own shirt and draping it on his own desk chair. “You’re not ruining it, dude,” he protested. Lance snorted, turning his shirt in his hands to find the right way to put it on. “If anything, I’ll have a hell of a story to tell after all of this is over.”

He pulled the shirt down and met Keith’s eyes as the collar passed over his head. Whatever Keith had been planning to say clearly fell away as Lance’s shirt came into view, and Keith tilted his head in befuddlement. “Is that a Camp Half Blood t-shirt?”

Lance looked down at the shirt and grinned. “Yeah!”

Keith’s lips twitched in a small smile. “I’m more a Camp Jupiter guy myself.”

“Traitor.”

Lance was starting to like Keith.

~~

**_Day Two_ **

When Keith woke up, the bed across from him was empty and made up, if not a little rumpled. He sat straight up, heart in his throat, and then relaxed a little bit when he saw Lance’s backpack still sitting at the foot of the bed.

Yeah, okay, so for a second he’d thought Lance had fully left him stranded in Pittsburgh. Which wasn’t the worst place a person could be stranded, of course – at least it wasn’t _Ohio_ – but he still had no way back without breaking the bank entirely.

Keith knew that it took him a while to trust people – it came from being in foster care, according to his therapist (not that he needed a therapist to tell him that bit of obvious truth), and moving around for most of his life until highschool. This trip was going against every fiber of his being. He didn’t know Lance. Didn’t know what kind of person he was, what kind of driver he was, hell, if he was a homophobe or not (he knew every lyric to every Panic! song Keith had played so far, but he also had a minion keychain. A _minion_ ).

But Lance had also been nothing but kind to him, and the banter they’d shared so far was not unlike the banter he and Pidge exchanged over text and Skype. He was a careful driver when he needed to be, he’d let Keith mooch his snacks and go through his Spotify account, and he’d left his bag in the room alone with Keith which meant, to some extent, he already trusted Keith.

Keith sighed and ran his hands down his face. Curse Shiro for getting him into this. But also he couldn’t be mad, because missing Shiro’s wedding would have been the worst day of his life. Shiro had known Curtis for almost five and a half years now, and it was the happiest Keith had seen him in nearly a decade.

Keith stood and stretched, peeking curiously into the bathroom. He didn’t expect Lance to be in there, and he wasn’t, which meant he was either downstairs grabbing breakfast or being a serial killer.

He opted to believe the first one.

Keith shot a text to Shiro to let him know he wasn’t dead and a text to Pidge to let her know what the hell he was up to, and then he rummaged through his bag and pulled out a fresh shirt and jeans, glancing back at the door before shimmying out of his night clothes. He pulled the jeans on, hopping a little embarrassingly and being eternally grateful that Lance _wasn’t_ here to mock that, and then turned the shirt in his hands to find the correct side.

It was then that the door opened and Keith jumped a mile, instinctively covering his chest to hide the scars there before remembering that his back was to the entrance. Two years of being in random dorms in college with transphobic roommates before finally caving and getting a single was still engrained in him, clearly.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” Lance said, his voice both cheery and cheeky as Keith hurriedly pulled his shirt on.

Keith huffed, turning and pulling the hem of his shirt down before looking up. His retort died in his throat at the sight of the McDonalds bags in Lance’s hands. Lance held them up with a grin. “Breakfast here was some sad looking apples and free granola bars. I ran across the street. I figured you were good with meat, since you ate some of my jerky yesterday.”

Keith took the offered bag with what he knew was a stunned expression, opening it and getting hit in the face with the smell of a sausage McMuffin and hash browns. “Uh…thanks,” he finally managed, looking up at Lance in surprise. “You didn’t have to-”

Lance snorted, already cross legged on his bed and halfway through his own McMuffin. “Dude, I know I didn’t. Shut up and eat, we gotta be out of here by nine if we want to make good headway.”

Keith sat down and pulled out the sandwich, studying it before taking a bite. “I was thinking,” he said, speaking around his food, which Shiro would have yelled at him for. Lance looked up, an eyebrow lifted expectantly, and Keith resisted the urge to swipe his thumb over the grape jelly (what was that about?) off the corner of his lip. “Um. I hear the Nationality Rooms at Pitt are pretty cool. And free, unless you get a tour. They open at nine, so I figured if you wanted to check out something in the city…”

He stopped speaking, turning his interest to his sandwich, and when Lance spoke, it was soft and warm. “That’d be awesome, dude. You know anything about them?”

Keith looked up to find Lance smiling, and it made something in his chest warm. He shoved it down quickly. “Not much, just what one of my college friends told me. She looked at Pitt for school but went a different route. She really liked the Nationality Rooms though, so it always stuck with me.”

Lance’s fingers tapped on the edges of his McMuffin – his second, Keith hadn’t even seen him finish the second one. He reached for his own second one at the reminder. “I’m down,” Lance said. “And thanks.”

Keith stopped unwrapping his second sandwich, looking back up. “What?”

Lance shrugged, lifting up the top of his muffin and dumping a whole grape jelly packet on it. Keith was a little disgusted, but also intrigued. “For suggesting it.”

“Told you last night,” Keith said, biting down into his sandwich. “I don’t want to ruin your trip.”

Lance’s eyes were glittering when he looked up at him again. “You’re not.”

~~

“I’m telling you, they could’ve just filmed _Harry Potter_ in the learning cathedral, it looks exactly like some of the scenes in the movie,” Keith declared for probably the fifth time, making Lance snicker.

His fingers tapped cheerfully along to the Daughtry song that had come up on shuffle, the road now completely clear and free of rain. The sun was close to it’s peak, being nearly 11:30 in the morning, and Lance was feeling energized. He glanced at the GPS, leading them up through PA towards Erie to take them through Cleveland and over through to Michigan. “Wanna take the scenic route?” he asked Keith, instead of responding to his _Harry Potter_ comment.

Keith looked over at him, eyes flickering to the GPS. “How much longer will that take?” he asked.

Lance checked the time on the route and tilted his head. “Extra half hour, maybe a full hour. Come on, we can still get to Michigan by the end of the day dude, it’s not like I was gonna stop in Cleveland for much anyway. The only interesting thing is like…Lake Erie and the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame.”

Keith snorted. “Been there. Overrated, unless you like Lady Gaga’s meat dress. Which I assume you’d _love_ to see.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lance asked in fake indignation. He paused, and then shot Keith a smile. “If you have a picture of it though, I’d love to know.”

Keith chuckled, the faintest dimple showing on his right cheek, and Lance forced his eyes back to the road with more difficulty than he’d like to admit. “Right. Uh…do we really need to go through the mountains?”

Lance hummed, tapping Blue’s wheel thoughtfully. “Technically, no. But come on dude, the mountains are so pretty. It’s only an extra hour, tops!”

He saw Keith purse his lips out of the corner of his eyes and slumped, expecting a rejection. To his surprise, Keith shook his head and smiled. “All right,” he conceded. “Let’s go through the mountains.”

Lance whooped and Keith shook his head again, his grin growing. He glanced over and tilted his head, pointing at Lance’s dashboard. “Should we stop for more gas? You’re at half.”

Lance shook his head. “Nah. Blue here is a trooper. We’ll stop after we get out of the mountains. Let’s GO, adventure time baby!”

Keith snickered, and Lance took that as the cue to lean over and crank up the Fall Out Boy that had come up on shuffle.

~~

“Keith could you just…could you just hold on a sec?” Lance asked, stumbling over his own feet as he tried to hoist his backpack on without tripping and falling down the mountain path.

Keith shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and scowled at the forest floor. “No. This is your fault.”

“I thought we would have enough to make it through the area!” Lance whined, finally straightening out his bag and trotting to catch up with Keith. He paused for a moment, ducking his head. “I’m sorry.”

Keith blew through his nose, looking up at the sky in exasperation. “It’s fine.”

“No, I mean…” Lance rubbed the back of his neck and looked away. “I mean for all of this. For dragging you along and making it seem like fun and then fucking it all up, and you’re stuck with someone you barely even know, and-”

“Can you shut up for like five seconds? Ever?” Keith asked, trying not to sound irritated. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, I…I’m annoyed, yeah. At this situation. But I can’t be mad at you, Lance. You offered to take a complete stranger to his brother’s wedding across the country out of literally the goodness of your heart and ruin your own trip. How could I be mad at that?”

Lance offered him a faint smile and gripped the strap of his backpack a little tighter. “Yeah, well…I’m still sorry about this whole mess, then.”

Keith hummed and they fell silent, trudging through the woods and following the posted signs to the service station. Every so often, they’d check their phones for signals, and every time, they were disappointed.

After about ten minutes of walking in near silence, Keith clicked his tongue. “So uh…you said you had siblings? How uh…how many?”

Lance lifted his eyebrows but grinned. “I’ve got four. Veronica, Marco, Luis, and Rachel. They’re all older, except Rachel. She’s my twin. I mean technically she’s older by like, eight minutes. But yeah. What about you? Obviously Shiro.”

Keith’s nose wrinkled. “Just him. He’s my foster brother, but I’ve known him since I was a little kid, so I feel like I’ve known him my whole life.”

Lance opened his mouth, shut it again, tightened his backpack grip and glanced at his phone. Keith let a small smile flicker over his face. “It’s okay, you can ask.”

“Your parents uh…around?” Lance asked, wincing even as he said it.

Keith shook his head. His smile grew fond, if not a little sad. “Not really. My dad was a firefighter. He died when I was 7. My mom wasn’t in the picture at the time, so I was put into foster care. Adopted by Shiro’s family when I was almost 14, and reconnected with my mom when I was a junior in high-school.”

Lance blinked a couple times when Keith stopped talking. “Damn. That’s a lot, dude. You chill with your mom though?”

“Yup,” Keith said with a grin. Something in his eyes glittered, and Lance’s stomach did a little twisty move. “It’s funny, because Shiro has two moms, so I have three.”

“Oh,” Lance said in surprise. “Nice.”

When he didn’t say anything else, Keith’s expression grew a little wary. “That’s not a problem, is it? Because if it is I can hitchhike to-”

Lance slapped him on the shoulder lightly. “Shut up, dude, it’s totally fine. I just didn’t have anything else to say. I’m bisexual. You’re chill.”

Keith’s hard look fell into something easier. “Good. I’m gay.”

“I figured. No straight guy would be caught dead with your hair.”

“What the fuck is wrong with my hair?”

“Oh nothing, it’s just super gay.”

Keith snorted and glanced at his phone again, doing a double take. “I have a bar!”

Lance pointed ahead of them, picking up his pace. “Makes sense, there’s a lodge right here. Come on, let’s see if they have service and maybe a tow company listed. Or some spare gas. We can be out of PA by night time if they do.”

“As much as I love the outdoors,” Keith declared, kicking the mud off his sneakers as they climbed the porch of the information lodge, “I really, really hate the woods.”

~~

Lake Erie was _massive._

Lance wasn’t sure what he had expected – his whole childhood, he’d grown up in Cuba. Surrounded by oceans. He moved to the states in middle school, to Arizona through all of highschool, and then down to Florida for college. In his head, lakes were small. You could at the very least see across them, and most of the time, you could walk across them without your head ever dipping fully underwater.

Lake Erie was an ocean. It was a full ocean. Lance had never seen a lake so…breathtaking.

“It’s nice, right?” Keith said, standing next to him with his hands in his front pockets.

Lance chanced a glance at him, which was a mistake – the wind was nuts around the lake, and it buffered his usual mullet around his head, making it dance across his skin and blow back away from his face. He only realized he was staring when Keith tilted his head to look at him, an eyebrow raising, and Lance suddenly remembered he had asked a question. “Uh…”

He looked away quickly, turning back to the view in front of him rather than the one next to him, and parted his lips. There were actual waves cresting at the edge of the shore. He’d never seen a lake do that. “It’s insane,” he whispered.

Keith’s laugh was soft, not meant to insult. “It is,” he agreed, rocking on his heels. “First time I saw it, Shiro couldn’t convince me it wasn’t an ocean until I got in and realized it was freshwater.”

“Did you live here?” Lance asked, glancing back at him again.

Keith’s head shook. “No. Shiro’s first boyfriend was an astronaut, and there’s a NASA center in the area. We were visiting.” Seeing Lance’s blink, he smiled. “Yes, we’re both gay.”

Keith paused, clearly thinking something over, but whatever it was, he decided not to share it. Lance was a little bummed, but he didn’t pry – they’d known each other all of two days, he didn’t have an all access pass to Keith’s entire past.

Two days, and yet there was the unmistakable fluttering in his heart that Lance had only felt once before, with Allura, back in high-school. He knew he fell for people quickly, but this was ridiculous. “Nah, not surprised there,” he finally said, grinning and giving Keith an easy look. “My twin is also bi. My sister Veronica is a lesbian, and Marco’s wife is pan. Whole family is full of gays.”

Keith’s laugh was easy, a little more relaxed, and Lance was glad he could make whatever nerves he’d had build up in that moment ease. “My first girlfriend came out as a lesbian when we were seniors in high school.”

Both of Keith’s eyebrows lifted as he looked over at Lance and something like mirth danced in his eyes, and fuck if that didn’t do something to Lance’s heartbeat. “That’s rough, buddy.”

“You know, I knew you reminded me of someone. You are EXACTLY the same level of broody as Prince Zuko.”

“I am NOT!”

~~

“See the line where the sky meets the sea? It CALLS meeeeee,” Lance crooned, leaning into Keith’s space as the man struggled not to laugh. “And no one KNOOOOOWWWSSS…how far it GOOOEESSSSS!”

“Lance, I will drive us straight into a ditch if you do not shut up,” Keith said, but he was grinning, and his shoulders were shaking, so Lance knew that he didn’t mean it.

“You love my singing.”

“I love your singing the way I love women,” Keith deadpanned, and that sent Lance into a fit of cackling, _Moana_ soundtrack forgotten.

They had gone through the entirety of Lance’s 36 hour long Road Trip Playlist and had moved, begrudgingly on Keith’s part, to his Disney playlist somewhere around Toledo. They’d crossed state lines into Michigan about thirty minutes ago, and it was nearing seven in the evening. The highway wasn’t quite as busy as it had been an hour prior, but there were still some people whose driving was making Keith uneasy.

Keith reached over and turned the music down, much to Lance’s faked annoyance, his eyes flicking between the GPS and the highway in front of them. He tapped his fingers against the wheel a little nervously – he didn’t particularly like driving, but he didn’t expect Lance to drive the whole way if he was tagging along. “Where should we stop? I know Detroit is coming up relatively soon, so.”

Lance grabbed his phone, turning down what was now something from a DCOM that Keith had never seen (something about “determinating,” whatever that was) and started tapping his thumbs over the screen. “All right, let me find a motel in the city. That way we have some options for food tomorrow before we leave. Any insights on fun shit to do in Michigan?”

Keith snorted. “In Detroit?”

“Touché.” Lance hummed and scrolled down his screen while Keith watched the road – the woman in the minivan to his right had been making him nervous with her rapid lane switching. Lance’s singing had been keeping him distracted, but now his full attention was on this woman. “Yeah, they’ve got something. Give me a second, I’m gonna pull up directions.”

Keith nodded, merging into the lane on his left in an effort to get further from the minivan woman. Lance looked up quickly and then back down at his phone. “Actually, we need to switch back over, the exit comes up pretty soon.”

“Right,” Keith muttered, slowing just a little to let the woman get further ahead. His fingers were so tight on the wheel that he couldn’t quite feel them. His shoulders were no longer relaxed. “What number?”

He could feel Lance watching him. “Uh…exit 237. It’s the one after this one. You good?”

“I’m fine,” Keith said, tracking the woman as she swerved into a different lane yet again. No turn signal, which aggravated him. He knew he probably sounded snappy. “Just ready to be off the road.”

“Right,” Lance said, slow. From his peripheral, Keith could see him looking out the windshield, presumably following Keith’s gaze to the mini-fucking-mom-van who had just swerved again. “Well, we’re almost there. We can grab some dinner or something, there might be a good diner or something in the area, if you’re down.”

Keith swallowed his irritated answer – his oncoming panic attack wasn’t Lance’s fault. He flexed his fingers. “Yeah. Sure. Sounds good.”

“Exit’s coming up,” Lance said, and his voice sounded lighter, gentler, and that was what Keith needed to hear right now.

He dragged his eyes away from Speedy Mc-Lane-Change and zeroed in on the 237 exit, putting his blinker on like a decent human being and pulling over to the exit ramp.

“And then there’s a Denny’s right down the road, actually,” Lance said, and Keith, for a moment, had nearly forgotten the other man was there. His head felt like it was fogging over – not a good indicator. “Why don’t we pull in there and grab something to eat while we book a motel, hmm?”

Keith felt like he was on autopilot. He heard Lance’s directions, he did, but he didn’t at the same time. Somehow, still, they ended up in the Denny’s parking lot, and then Lance was leading him inside, chattering away about…about _something_ , Keith had no idea what, and his hands were hovering, like he didn’t quite want to touch Keith without permission but like he needed to.

Lance’s voice was grounding, even if Keith couldn’t quite make out what he was saying, and he followed it to a back booth, where the host gave them a couple menus and left them alone. Keith stared down at the table for a moment – he should sit, right?

Lance was already sitting, so Keith figured he should too. The springs under his seat were a little too pointy, the seat a little too worn through, and he felt them clearer than he’d felt anything since he’d let go of the steering wheel. For a moment he just stared at the menu. He registered a man coming over – the waiter, the logical part of his brain said – and Lance said something to him, making him leave again.

“Keith? Buddy, you with me here?”

Lance’s voice made his head tingle, kind of like how he felt the first time he had weed with Pidge. A weird tingle, not grating, and Keith tightened his grip on the edge of his seat. Nodded, because Lance had asked a question.

“Okay. Cool. I ordered you a Dr. Pepper, that cool? Cause I know you aren’t a Coke guy.”

That was a joke. Keith could hear the intonation in Lance’s voice, teasing, but full of concern. Nervous, but trying to maintain normalcy. For Keith’s sake or his own, Keith wasn’t sure. Maybe both. He took a breath and forced himself to look up at Lance. Swallowed. “That’s fine,” he whispered.

Lance’s shoulders slumped and he offered Keith a gentle smile. He had…a genuinely gorgeous smile, Keith noted. He’d known that, of course, but the pressing thought made the tingle in his head start to die away. He took a breath, relaxing his grip on the seat of the booth, and took in his surroundings.

They were sitting in the back of the restaurant. There were two other tables in the restaurant, one a family with messy kids. The other was an old couple. There was an employee at the cash register, counting a stack of fives. Keith was facing the door.

That was his favorite place to sit – far away from the door, but facing it. He wasn’t sure if Lance had done it accidentally, or if one night in a motel together had been enough to tell him that information, but regardless, he appreciated it.

When he looked back, Lance was determinedly not looking at him, instead studying the menu in front of him and drumming his fingers on his cheek. Keith glanced down at his own menu, swallowing. The idea of eating at this second in time repulsed him, but he knew if he didn’t, he’d be hangry later. And Lance had already been so gentle with him, despite having no idea what had happened, that he didn’t want to snap at him later on.

The plastic of the menu was cool under his fingers, and it squeaked a little as he opened it up. The words were just a little too big, the colors garish, and he found he really couldn’t read anything, so he focused on the photos of the food.

“Shiro and I were in a bad car accident when I was fourteen,” he said without thinking, and he could feel Lance glance up at him. He focused on the picture of the steak, wondering what photo editing they’d done to get that color pink in the middle. “Pretty soon after I came to live with him. I was fine. I mean…I had a concussion. Some scrapes and bruises, a broken ankle. But I was fine otherwise.” He’d never said this stuff to a stranger before, but he and Lance had now crossed over half a dozen states together and shared a room; he supposed they weren’t really strangers anymore. “I-”

The waiter returned, setting their drinks down, and Keith froze until he was gone, registering Lance’s soft, “Thank you!” in the back of his head. When the waiter was gone again, Lance fell silent. Keith stared at his drink, tracing the path of a condensation bead down the glass. It pushed towards him, and he looked up, startled, to find Lance’s gaze flickering over him. His face was open, gentle. “You don’t have to-”

Keith gripped the cup and the cold shocked him a little, centered him. “He lost most of his right arm. The way the guy hit us…he was driving, and I was in the backseat behind him. I begged him before we left to get in the front, but he’s one of those people that takes the rules about people in the front seat really seriously.” He hesitated – he wasn’t in the mental space to come out again. “I was really short in middle school. Didn’t hit puberty until late. So he made me sit in the back. If he hadn’t…”

He took a long drag of his Dr. Pepper, sinking into the sweetness of it. It fizzed in his mouth, and he drew in a breath. “Anyway,” he murmured, stirring his straw around the glass. “The way that lady was driving…”

Lance’s fingertips were right next to his arm. He looked up, locked eyes with the man. Lance’s lips were parted, eyes glassy. “You don’t have to explain to me,” he whispered. “I’m glad you did, but you don’t…you didn’t…”

Keith shook his head. “I did,” he said, and he felt more grounded now. More centered. “I did. You needed to know. Since I’m going to be driving.”

“Do you _want_ to drive?” Lance asked, sounding upset, and why the fuck was he upset? “Keith, dude, I don’t want you to feel like you _have_ to drive. I was planning on doing this trip solo, it wouldn’t make a difference to me.”

Keith lowered his gaze again, watched the carbonation bubble on his soda. “It makes a difference to me.”

That shut Lance up, and Keith could finally read the menu again, so he studied it for a minute. When Lance spoke again, it was quiet. “I understand panic attacks,” he said, stirring his drink with his straw. It looked like lemonade. “I get them. Rachel gets them. So I knew that’s what was happening. If…I mean, if you want, if it ever starts hitting like that again, that fast, let me know? We can pull over and switch, no matter where we are. If you insist on being stubborn and driving.”

Keith looked up, flipping at the pages of his menu without actually turning them. He met Lance’s gaze and gave him a tiny smile, feeling something like relief wash through him. “Yeah. We can do that.”

Lance smiled, dazzling, and pointed his dripping straw at Keith. “Good. Plus that means you don’t have to deal with my lousy renditions of Disney songs that way.”

Keith rolled his eyes, silently ecstatic that Lance was back to bantering and joking with him, acting like everything was normal. “Please, you’ll still sing them.”

Lance snickered and picked up his menu again. Keith waited a beat, two, before looking down at his own menu once more and murmuring, “They weren’t that lousy, anyhow,” under his breath.

“Keith Kogane, did you just _compliment_ my singing?” Lance demanded.

“Absolutely not.”

~~

**_Day Three_ **

“So we both agree we’re not stopping for anything in Indiana, right?” Lance asked as Keith got back into the passenger side from pumping gas.

Keith snorted. “Absolutely the fuck not. You wanna be hate crimed? We’re both gay and not white.”

Lance snickered. “Dope. In that case, next stopping place is Chicago, and I demand we see the bean.”

He pulled out of the gas station and onto the highway, leaving Keith to scroll through his Spotify for something that wouldn’t, and he quotes, “destroy his eardrums.” As if Lance hadn’t caught him quietly singing along to a Lady Gaga song when he got back in the car from his bathroom run. “The bean?” Keith asked, settling on Green Day and putting the phone up on it’s mount for Lance to see the map. “Really?”

“I’ve never been!” Lance protested, shooting Keith a squint. “I’m taking a photo in the bean.”

“That’s so overdone,” Keith said, though there was no malice in his voice. “Couldn’t you like…I don’t know, do _anything_ else?”

“Absolutely the fuck not, we’re going to the bean and you don’t get a say in the matter.”

Keith snorted and shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest. “Fine. But I’m not getting in the picture with you.”

The look Lance shot him was near sinister.

~~

Lance started sprinting the moment they rounded the corner and the massive silver stupid bean came into view. He whooped, jumping and spinning in the air, already pulling his phone out, and Keith could do nothing more than chuckle, shake his head, and follow after him with a fond smile on his face.

Lance reached the bean well before Keith and had probably taken like twenty selfies by the time Keith caught up with him, staring up at the bean. He’d never admit it, but he was a little impressed – not by the bean, because come _on_ , it was a bean. A legume. A fucking fruit of sorts. But it was MASSIVE, and it was made by a cool dude, so Keith was at least a tiny bit impressed.

There were probably hundreds of people at the base of the bean, all doing the same thing Lance was doing – taking selfies or pictures of themselves in the reflection of the bean. Speaking of…

“Come on. One picture.”

“No.”

“Plllleeeeeeaaassse?”

“I will hitchhike the rest of the way to Oregon.”

“Is that not what you’re technically doing?” Lance pointed out.

Keith squinted at him and Lance just gave him a shit eating grin and elbowed Keith lightly in the arm. “Come onnnnnn, we gotta have proof we did this adventure!”

“Trust me, you couldn’t make this shit up,” Keith muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. When he peeked up, Lance had gone back to taking selfies, and Keith took the second he was distracted to study him.

The peace sign he was holding up…how had he not figured out he was bi the moment they met? His smile was wide, his eyes sparkling, and his tongue was sticking out of his mouth just a little. His hair was tosseled from his sprint to the bean, his cheeks flushed, and his t-shirt (some band called Sunset Curve, he hadn’t elaborated when Keith asked) a little rumpled.

Something twisted in Keith’s gut and made his cheeks warm, and he fought it down as fast as he could. His last crush hadn’t gone well, and Keith would be damned if he let another one start after barely knowing the guy for three days.

Still, Lance…Lance was probably the nicest person Keith had ever met, aside from Shiro. He was taking him across the country for gods sake, not to mention how he’d handled his panic attack the night before.

“Fine,” Keith said, before he could stop himself by second guessing.

Lance, who’d long since stopped pestering him, jumped, looking over at Keith with wide eyes. “What?”

Keith pressed his lips into a thin line. “We can take a selfie.”

Watching Lance’s face light up was like seeing a Christmas tree be plugged in. His arm immediately fitted itself around Keith’s shoulders and he lifted his phone, tapping on the screen to turn the camera around.

His arm – Keith didn’t let people touch him often. Even last night, Lance hadn’t touched him. But something about the way his elbow hooked over his shoulder, his hand draped against the top of his chest, felt incredibly right. Keith glanced at the camera, relieved to see that he wasn’t as red as he felt like he was.

“Dude, you have to smile.”

Keith rolled his eyes, letting a soft smile spread across his face, and Lance took the photo mid eye roll.

“Perfect. Shows your irritation with the situation AND how much you enjoy my company,” Lance said in delight. “Now come on, let’s grab lunch. I read some great reviews about a barbeque place near here.”

He dropped his arm from where it had been resting on Keith’s shoulders, and Keith followed behind his eager feet, already missing the feeling and trying his hardest not to.

~~

**_Day Four_ **

They spent the night in Chicago, only because Lance really wanted to walk around and see the sights as much as he could – he’d never been, as he’d informed Keith. And Keith…well, he felt guilty about making Lance feel like he had to rush through his road trip, so he didn’t protest. Didn’t want to protest, actually; he found that the longer they walked around the city and around the lake, the more he was enjoying himself.

They got a hotel a little outside the city, across the street from a combination Burger King and Wendy’s (which prompted Lance to, of course, sing the “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” song on a loop for like an hour until Keith whacked him in the face with a pillow), and in the morning they grabbed breakfast and hopped back on the road, heading for Wisconsin.

They spent the day driving through Wisconsin, stopping by Madison to check out the capital, and decided early on they’d be spending the next night in Minnesota – because in Lance’s words, they needed a full afternoon to check out the Mall of America, which was fifteen minutes from Minneapolis. Keith had never been big on malls, but he had to admit, the Mall of America sounded pretty wild. There was a theme park inside, apparently. So he was happy to stay the night.

Only problem…

“There’s no hotels,” Lance said as they sat in one of the five million food court areas in the mall, slurping down a Dr. Pepper bigger than his head. “Like zip. None. At least, none that don’t cost like a bajillion dollars.”

Keith frowned, stirring the straw in his lemonade and picking at the remainder of his fries. “Like none? What’s going on, is there an event?”

Lance shook his head. “No idea. There’s just nothing in like a 25 mile area that’s both in our price range and also like…not less than two stars. No offense, I don’t want to stay in a place that-” he squinted at his phone “-had a dead body found in the basement.”

Keith snorted, taking a sip of his lemonade and glancing out over the indoor theme park. It was wild to look at. “Yeah, I’ll pass. It’s getting kind of dark, and the forecast says it’s gonna be foggy, so I’m not super up for driving, and you’ve been driving all day.”

Lance was tapping at his phone furiously, his eyebrows furrowed. His head tilted, much like a curious dog’s, and Keith paused in biting into a fry. “Find something?”

Lance looked up sharply, eyebrows lifting. “Oh! Uh…maybe. There’s a campground near here, no fee to get in. I think I mentioned, I brought a tent…if you’re down? If not, we can try and find something else, but-”

“I brought a sleeping bag. Camping sounds fun,” Keith said with a shrug. Catching Lance’s disbelieving stare, he frowned, picking at another fry. “What?”

Lance shrugged, ripping off a piece of his chicken tender and popping it in his mouth. “Never heard you say something sounds fun before.”

“To be fair we’ve known each other less than a week.”

“Still.”

Keith smiled, looking down at his straw and tugging on it. “I used to live in a desert, for a while. Alone, when I was first going to college. I camped a lot there. The sky was insane. It’s kind of how my mom and I bonded? She gave me my knife I keep on me during one of those trips.”

Silence, and Keith glanced up to find Lance watching him, lips parted ever so slightly. Keith suddenly felt self-conscious. “What?”

Lance startled, straightening up. “Nothing. Nothing. It was – wait. You have a knife?”

At a nearby table, a mom glanced over, eyebrows lifting, and Keith shot her an apologetic smile before looking back at Lance with a deadpan stare. “Yes, say it louder, Lance.”

Lance smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. I’ve never seen it.”

“I keep it on a holster under my shirt, it’s no wonder. I’m not trying to advertise a knife the length of my forearm to the general public.”

“ _The size of your-!_ ”

“Lance!” Keith hissed, shooting another weak smile at the mother.

Lance waved his hands in front of him in a criss cross motion. “Right, right, sorry. I thought you meant like, a switchblade or something. Jesus. Well. Camping it is then, I guess. But first-”

“No.”

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”

“You want us to ride the Spongebob ride.”

“…no.”

“No is correct.”

“Awww, come on Keith! Please?”

~~

They rode the ride.

~~

Lance was surprisingly good with a tent, but Keith was even more surprisingly good with building a fire. He had one going by the time Lance was done pitching the site, and was boiling a pot of water over it from the camping supplies Lance had brought along. He was rummaging through as Lance sat down on the log next to him, rubbing his hands. “Whatcha making?”

Keith pulled out two travel mugs triumphantly and then held up a couple tea bags he’d swiped from one of the hotels they’d stayed at. “Tea. Want some?”

“Sure! I’m gonna go grab my sweatshirt from the car, you need anything?”

Keith shook his head. “Nah, I’m good for now. Thanks though.”

Lance trekked off to the car and Keith ripped open two of the tea bags, draping them in the mugs and glancing up to watch Lance’s retreating back. They were camped pretty close to the river – the Mississippi, if Keith wasn’t mistaken – and the recent rain had made the water raise enough so that it was a constant droning sound in the background.

The night air was cooling down relatively fast, but Keith had always run hot even before he transitioned, and the fire was an extra layer of warmth keeping him from the chill, so he was comfortable in just the sweatshirt he had on.

Lance returned as he was pouring the hot water into the mugs, and he passed one over to Lance before picking up his own and taking a sip, wincing a little at the heat. Lance chuckled and learned from Keith’s mistake, merely cupping the mug in his hands and leaning back to look at the stars through the trees.

“Dude, it’s so fucking clear out here. I bet if there were no trees we could see like a million constellations.”

“You like stars?” Keith asked, sipping his tea a little more cautiously.

Lance hummed. “Yeah, I-”

“Hold on.” Keith frowned, holding up a hand to Lance. “Do you hear that?”

Lance frowned, sat back up straight, and lowered his mug, staring out into the woods over the campfire. “What, the river?”

“No.” Keith had set his mug down and was standing now, frowning into the darkness. “Listen.”

Lance set his own cup down and stood to stare out at the darkness alongside Keith, his head tilted. “I’m lost dude, what are you-?”

Keith bolted towards the river, leaving Lance to stumble after him with a yelp. He crashed through bushes and trees without hesitation, Lance following closely behind him with slightly less grace. As they got further into the woods, Lance could start to make out what it was Keith had been hearing: a faint whimpering sound, one of distress and need. He picked up his pace until he was alongside Keith as they ran.

“You’ve gotta be part alien, with that hearing,” Lance chuckled breathlessly.

Keith looked sideways at him, ducking a branch. “You hear it then?”

“Yeah,” Lance said with a nod. “But what is it? _Where_ is it?”

They stopped on the bank, searching the roaring water until Keith pointed. “There.” 

At the edge of the river was a bag, half submerged in the roaring water. It writhed in a way unnatural to the river’s movements, and Lance’s stomach twisted. “Oh my _god_ , what-?”

He and Keith skidded down the bank, getting mud all over their clothes and shoes. The water was shockingly cold, Lance learned, as he was forced to step into it to get within reach of the bag. It soaked through his shoes and socks in seconds and left him with goosebumps up and down his legs. As he tried to get back up onto the bank, he slipped on a moss covered rock with a yelp.

Keith’s hand shot to his arm, steadying him, and Lance breathed out a shaky thanks before edging towards the bag. It was hooked on a log, caught on the knotted and closed drawstrings, and Lance worked numb fingers over the strings while Keith yanked off his sweatshirt and wrapped the bag in it tightly, pulling it towards his torso.

The struggling stopped for a moment, presumably shocked, and then the whimpering grew louder. Lance huffed, his fingers tugging at the strings uselessly. “It’s too knotted,” he told Keith, looking up. “And the log is too thick, plus I can’t actually like, _see._ It’s dark as shit out.”

Keith shrugged the bag to one arm, reaching behind him with his free hand and pulling out the knife he kept on his back. It was indeed massive, as long as his forearm and glinting in the minimal starlight, and he flipped it over, offering the handle to Lance. Lance took it gently; he remembered Keith saying his mom had given it to him, and there was no way he was gonna screw this up.

The blade was sharp, and it cut through the wet strings like butter. Keith started climbing back up the shore instantly with the bag safely in his arms, leaving Lance to look down at the knife, and then stick it between his teeth and follow. So sue him, he didn’t trust himself to hold it while he stumbled around in icy, fast flowing water.

When Keith turned back to give him a hand, something in his eyes flickered. He settled on a cocky grin and held a hand out. “I can take the knife, you know.”

Lance slapped the handle into his grip and then stepped up onto the muddy embankment, shoes sliding and teeth chattering. “Yeah, sure. You open the bag?”

Keith shook his head as he sunk the knife back into its holster. His arms were covered in goosebumps – no wonder, Lance realized, as he hadn’t had a shirt on under his sweatshirt. The bag was pressed firmly to his chest to keep the thing inside it from moving too much. “Don’t want to hurt whatever is inside.”

He kept his grip tight on the bag as they trekked back to their fire, Lance holding back branches and leaves from their path. As they walked, the bundle stopped struggling as much, though it kept whimpering.

The sight of the fire was a breath of fresh air to Lance. He tossed a couple more logs on while Keith sank down onto the log he’d been using as a seat. “Come help?”

Lance sank down next to him, holding the bundle down while Keith leaned over it and swiped his knife along the edge of the bag, slicing it open. Inside was a sopping wet, exhausted, freezing dog, probably no more than a year old. It’s eyes were huge, glinted purple in the firelight, and it’s fur was plastered to it’s body.

“Christ,” Lance muttered, easing the bag away from the animal as Keith tossed his knife down and held the animal still. “What fucking assholes would-?”

Keith shook his head and carefully turned the dog in his hands. It was big, bigger than expected for the bag it was in, and Lance had no doubt it would grow up to be massive. He scrambled to his feet and went to the car for a towel, and when he came back, Keith was rubbing the trembling animal down with his sweatshirt, which was still remarkably dry, all things given.

Lance stopped for a second, just watching. The way Keith’s bare arms glinted in the firelight, dripping with water. How soft his eyes were when he thought no one was looking, the way he cooed to the puppy.

It made his heart melt a little.

Keith’s arms shifted away from his torso, working his way down the body of the dog, and Lance’s breath hitched just the slightest bit in his throat, grip on the towel tightening. He glanced back at the car, wondering if it was too late to run back and grab Keith an extra shirt, pretend he hadn’t seen the very defined surgical scars on either side of his chest.

When Lance looked back, Keith was frozen, face pale, hands still on the dog, watching Lance warily. Lance lifted the towel slowly. “Um. You need an actual towel?”

Keith’s eyes moved over him quickly, lips parting, shoulders tense, and then he relaxed the tiniest bit. “Uh. Probably should. We’re both soaked too, you might want to…get some more.”

Lance nodded. “Right. Right.”

He tossed the first towel to Keith for the dog and jogged back to the car, his socks squishing uncomfortably in his shoes.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, what a dumb fucking way to react.

Lance leaned into the trunk, digging through their bags and pulling out fresh towels and two extra sweatshirts. On a whim, he grabbed a bag of plain jerky. It wasn’t the best for a dog, but it was better than nothing, and Lance didn’t really have any good options for animals.

He paused for a second, leaning his hands on the trunk and ducking his head. He felt _awful_. Lance knew it wasn’t his fault – it wasn’t anyone’s fault. But he knew what being outed felt like, and clearly Keith hadn’t wanted to tell him for whatever reason, and so he felt shitty.

The trunk slammed a little louder than Lance meant for it to and he jumped at it, clinging to the bundle of fabric in his arms a little tighter. When he got back to the fire, Keith was sitting on the ground, looking the dog – who had since backed away from Keith and was now cowering against another log – over carefully. His sweatshirt was draped over the log near the fire to dry, back turned a little towards Lance, and Lance respected that.

“Here,” he said, soft.

He handed over the extra towel and sweatshirt, dropping his own shirt onto the log behind him and twisting away from Keith to towel off his hair and wriggle out of his own soaking wet shirt. “I brought some jerky too,” he said, spitting a little as his lip caught on the collar of his tee. “I don’t really have anything else a dog could eat, we’ll have to stop somewhere.”

Keith hummed and Lance sighed in relief as the warm sweatshirt enveloped him. He forgot how cold it got at night up North. “That should be fine,” Keith answered, reaching a hand back and taking the offered jerky.

Lance sat down on the log, facing the fire, and yanked off his shoes, nose wrinkling as he poured excess water out and then laid them by the fire to dry. His socks followed suit, and he toweled off his pruney feet with disgust. “Still wanna camp?”

Keith stayed silent for a long time, longer than Lance was comfortable with, so he finally looked over at him. He’d pulled the sweatshirt on at some point, his hair still dripping a little. The dog was curled around itself a few feet away, watching both boys warily, and Keith was just sitting, watching it. He’d tossed a few pieces of jerky it’s way. “Keith?” Lance tried, voice soft.

Keith rubbed his hands vigorously over his face, sighing. “’s not how I wanted to tell you,” he mumbled into his palms.

Lance snorted, crossing his legs at the ankle. “I figured that. I will say, you have a fantastic body. So it wasn’t the worst way I could have found out.”

Keith whipped around to glower at him and Lance rolled his neck, shooting him an easy smile. Keith’s gaze relaxed as Lance reached out with his foot, poking in Keith’s general direction. “Hey. ‘m sorry. That shoulda been up to you.”

“Yeah, well…” Keith shrugged, turning now so that his back was against the log and he was facing the fire. He dragged his knees up to his chin and wrapped his arms around them. “It’s my own fault. Should’ve thought before I took the sweatshirt off.”

“You were saving a drowning puppy,” Lance scoffed, sliding off his log and onto the ground next to Keith, knocking their knees together. “I don’t think anyone would be thinking rationally.”

They both glanced towards the dog, who was eyeing the jerky Keith had tossed towards it with mounting interest. The moment it saw them watching, it sank back, so they turned their gazes back to the fire. “Thanks for not being an ass,” Keith finally said.

“I’d be a shitty bisexual if I was an ass to the people in my own community,” Lance retorted.

Keith’s smile was faint but there, and Lance considered it a win.

Now all they had to do was get this dog to trust them so they could take it to the nearest animal shelter.

~~

**_Day Five_ **

When Keith woke up, there was rain pattering softly on the tent roof – a light drizzle, not enough to get inside, and frankly, it was relaxing. For a moment he laid in his sleeping bag, arms tucked behind his head and eyes tracking the shadows of rain droplets racing down the tent.

At his feet, the dog they’d saved from the river was curled up snugly, his nose tucked into his tail and his ears twitching. It had taken him and Lance nearly two hours to coax the animal inside out of the chill, but in the end he’d been a very friendly dog, licking Keith on the cheek after drinking from his water bottle. He’d nearly tackled Lance in excitement when he’d run back to the car for more jerky.

At the thought of Lance, Keith rolled his head to look at him. The tent they were in was pretty small, so there was only about a half a foot of space between them. Lance’s face was buried into his pillow, his arms tucked under his head and his sleeping bag rising and falling with his breath. He was drooling, just a little bit, and it made Keith smile fondly.

He turned his gaze back to the racing rain drops, taking a breath and shutting his eyes for a moment. The air smelled like wet dirt and pine and petrichor, and it relaxed him in ways he hadn’t been relaxed all year. Less than a week until Shiro’s wedding, but he wasn’t stressed out.

Okay, that was a lie. Of course he was stressed. He was going to be the best man, when they got there (three days, if they kept up their current pace). He had the halfhearted start of a speech written in his phone that he’d been working on during lulls in their driving conversation, and he knew Shiro would already be looking for a suit for him, but this was his brother. This was a man who had taken him under his wing when Keith was at his most vulnerable.

This was the man who’d helped him take his first shot of Testosterone in high-school, who’d paid for him to get his hair cut, who’d taken him to change his legal name on all of his documents. The man who’d held his hand when he reconnected with his mother and gotten dumped the first time.

What the fuck was Keith even supposed to say about a brother like that? Nothing fit.

Still, despite all of that, despite the nerves in his chest, he found that right here, in the middle of the woods, laying next to a man who he’d known for less than a week, who had offered over his vacation to get Keith where he wanted to be most in the world, was where he’d felt the most at home since living with Shiro and his moms in high-school. Keith hadn’t felt like this since…ever, maybe.

He’d had dates, sure. Boyfriends, once or twice. He remembered most of them fondly, but there’d never been anything more than sex with anyone after the initial rush faded.

With Lance…Keith pressed his hands to his face.

Last night had been the cincher – Keith had had more than one man walk out on him when they’d found out he was trans. He tended to disclose that information immediately now when he was taking home someone he knew wouldn’t be more than a one-nighter; he didn’t need a bunch of transphobes knowing where he lived. With Lance, he’d kept it quiet only because at the beginning, he didn’t expect… _this._

Stupid fucking butterflies. The urge to wipe ketchup off the corner of his lip, to link their fingers together, to drive up to a cliff and sit in the back of Lance’s brother’s mom van and just stare at the stars and cuddle. He didn’t expect to laugh so hard, to enjoy being teased about his music taste, didn’t expect the urge to just crawl over to the sleeping bag next to him and-

Keith took in a stiff breath, dragging his hands back down his face and sitting up slowly. He lifted his arms in a stretch, finding the dog alert now, his head lifted and ears pricked towards the outside. Keith cracked his neck and smiled. “Hear a squirrel?” he murmured, low enough that he wouldn’t wake Lance.

The dog turned it’s head very briefly to look at him and Keith was stunned again at the color of it’s eyes. In the dim morning light, he could see the dog more clearly – he had a thick black coat that was speckled and swirled with different shades of gray and white. There was no collar around his neck, and his eyes were a hauntingly deep shade of purple that was nearly unnatural.

Keith eased out of his sleeping bag slowly, ducking to avoid the tent ceiling, and slipped his feet carefully into his still slightly damp Vans, the intent to find a bush heavy in his mind as he grabbed for a pack of tissues in his bag (Lance had promised him last night that if they camped again, he’d pick up a roll of toilet paper). He made it all the way to the door and had his hand on the zipper before the dog growled.

He froze, looking down at the dog. He was standing now, tail thwapping back and forth in aggravation. His gaze was not on Keith, but on the tent door. Keith looked back at the zipper and started to tug, and the dog darted between him and the flap with a sharp bark.

It startled Lance awake, the other man grunting and pressing his hands to his eyes. “He need to pee?” he murmured.

Keith frowned, looking down at the dog. His head was still firmly facing the front of the tent. “I…don’t think so.”

He tugged on the zipper again, shushing the dog when it started growling. He only pulled it down a couple inches, slipping his fingers into the gap and pulling it back so he could see what was making the dog’s hair stand on end.

Keith had a feeling it wasn’t a squirrel.

Sure enough, pacing their campsite and lumbering around their burned out fire, was a massive black bear, a younger looking bear tagging along. It was nosing at the ground around the fire, where they’d been tossing jerky to the dog, and Keith cursed internally – they’d probably missed a few pieces when they were cleaning up.

“Oh holy shit,” Lance whispered directly into Keith’s right ear.

Keith jumped, swallowing the very embarrassing shriek that had built in his throat, and glanced back. Lance was almost immediately behind him, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes sleepily peering past Keith to the bear.

He was shirtless – usually was at night, but he’d never been this _close_ to Keith while shirtless before. Keith swallowed and turned away before he could linger too long on his biceps (which were _way_ more defined than he’d realized), cheeks feeling warm. “What do we do?” he asked.

“Stay here,” Lance said simply. “She hopefully won’t stay long once she realizes there isn’t any food, and we do _not_ want to make her think we’re going for her cub. I have cards?”

Keith zipped the flap closed again and turned to look at Lance, heart jumping as he realized just _how_ close Lance had been standing. “Um. Yeah. Good plan. Go Fish?”

Lance looked unimpressed. “Go Fish? Really?”

“What?”

~~

It took about an hour for the bears to leave, during which time Lance won five games of Go Fish and Keith won six, which he’d never let Lance live down after his boasting. It also took that amount of time for both men to realize that they absolutely did not want to take the dog to a shelter.

His head was in Keith’s lap when Keith came to the realization, his fingers digging into the muscle behind the dog’s ear. “Do we have to take him to the shelter?” he had found himself asking, studying the cards in front of him.

“Oh thank god, I didn’t want to either,” Lance had sighed, and that had been that.

Of course, when they got to Oregon, they planned to take him to Shiro’s cat’s vet and get him checked out, make sure he was healthy, but it was easy for them to decide to keep him.

As they were tearing down the tent, however-

“We should name him Kosmo,” Lance said decisively.

Keith paused in his packing of the poles, swiping rain out of his eyes and turning to look at Lance, not impressed. “Cosmo?” he repeated, deadpan.

“Kosmo!” Lance said, giddy, and _fuck,_ his eyes were glittering in delight. “With a K, like Keith. Cause you heard him with your freaky alien hearing.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “I’m not an alien, Lance.”

“As far as you know.”

“Why _Kosmo?”_ Keith asked.

The dog woofed, tail wagging. He was standing at Lance’s side, had been snuffling at the tent as Lance rolled it up, and now Lance slung an arm around the dog and earned a lick on the cheek. “Cause he likes it! Isn’t that right, Kosmo buddy?” he said, turning and squishing Kosmo’s face in his hands and raising his face.

The dogs whole body was pretty much wiggling now, and Keith had to bite back a smile. “He’s just excited cause you’re using a dumb baby voice. Kosmo? Really?”

Lance scratched the dog behind the ears, grinning despite the rain trickling down his cheeks. “Yes. Kosmo. Now come on, let’s get in the car before we’re soaked again. Don’t need a 50 pound dog sopping wet in my brother’s car.”

Lance hefted the tent bag over one shoulder, his backpack on the other, and started trotting back to the car, whistling for the dog – Kosmo, Keith supposed – to follow, which he did happily. Keith, holding the bag of poles and his own backpack, did a quick double check of their area to make sure they hadn’t left anything behind, and then trotted after them.

He’d be lying if he said he didn’t love the name Kosmo.

~~

They had been planning on skipping through North Dakota – Lance didn’t really have anything of importance he wanted to stop and see there, and Keith had literally never thought of North Dakota for any reason other than thinking of South Dakota – until, about an hour outside of Bismarck, Lance sat up in the passenger seat and smacked Keith repeatedly on the arm. “Dude! There’s a dam!”

Keith blinked, waiting for the rest of the sentence. “A damn what?”

“No, just a dam! We _have_ to go.”

Keith tilted his head, throwing the blinker on and passing the grandma in front of them. “What’s it called? Where is it?”

“About an hour north of Bismarck,” Lance said, squinting at his phone. “It’s called the Garrison Dam. There’s also like, a fish hatchery and stuff nearby, but the I thought the dam would be cool.”

Keith pressed his lips into a thin line. “You think it’d be dam cool?”

He could _feel_ the look of glee Lance shot him. “Did you just make a pun AND a _Percy Jackson_ reference?”

“You have no proof.”

“Keith Kogane, a man after my own heart.”

Keith snorted and reached a hand out, pushing at Lance. “Shut up and give me the damn directions.”

“Another one! You’re on a roll!”

“Don’t make me shove you out of the car.”

~~

It turned out that the Garrison Dam was a popular lunch spot – tons of people were there walking dogs, fishing, and having picnics.

On the way out of Minnesota, Lance and Keith had swung by a pet store and picked up a collar, leash, food and treats, and toys for Kosmo. Now, they clipped the lead onto his collar and let the dog hop down into the parking lot, tail wagging in excitement as he finally got to get out of the back of the car. Lance handed the leash off to Keith and then dug around in the trunk, pursing his lips. “Well. Not much in the way of picnic options, but we have some chips and there’s soda still in the cooler, so we can do like a snacky picnic.”

Keith smiled, leaning down to scratch Kosmo behind the ears. “Works for me. Grab a blanket? Don’t think we’re gonna get a table,” he said, looking back around at the families spread out in the area. It was a Saturday, he supposed.

“Got it,” Lance said. He backed out, holding onto everything, and slammed the trunk shut.

Together they trekked down to the grassy area by the water, sitting a little bit away from the nearest people. Lance opened up the cooler and they cracked open a drink each, Keith pouring a little water into a bowl for Kosmo to lap at.

For a long couple of minutes, they just sat, watching the water swirl in the dam and listening to the kids around them shriek and play. Finally, Lance hummed. “Your brother’s wedding is in a week,” he noted. He glanced over at Keith. “Ready for it?”

Keith winced and looked down at his Sprite, wrapping Kosmo’s leash around his ankle so he could use his hands. “Kinda. I mean, I’m excited for sure, but I’m not sure how to write the speech, you know? Since I’m best man and all.”

Lance nodded. “I get that. When my brother Marco got married, my brother Luis was the best man.” Seeing Keith’s look, he grinned. “He’s older. Don’t worry, I threw a fit about it. Totally fake, but still threw it. He stressed about that thing for _months_. He ended up crying in the middle of the speech, but so did Marco.”

“That good of a speech, huh?” Keith asked, picking at the tab on his can.

Lance snorted. “Hell no,” he scoffed. “It was like, the worst speech I’ve ever heard, grammatically, stylistically, whatever.”

He reached out and set a gentle hand on Keith’s shoulder. “But everything he said came from the heart, and it meant something, and that’s what counted. Your speech will be good, dude.”

The easy grin he gave Keith shouldn’t have made his heart flutter so hard, but it did. He swallowed, looking away from Lance’s gaze and back to the dam. Lance’s hand started to draw away, and before it could, Keith spit out what he was thinking.

“Be my plus one?”

The look Lance gave him was startled. “What?”

Keith took a shallow breath and forced himself to turn his head and meet Lance’s gaze. “My plus one. I mean, I know Shiro kind of already invited you, but I also kind of told you that you weren’t allowed to come initially, but I…I want you to come. I mean, you’re doing all of this for me, it’s the least-”

“Keith, dude,” Lance said, holding up a hand and chuckling. When Keith quieted, he gave him a tiny smile. “I’d be happy to come. Let’s be real, you’d be lost without me. I don’t know how you made it this far in life.”

It was sarcastic, but it also felt just a little too intimate, so Keith snorted. “Right. You’d have given me a dam permanent headache.”

Lance burst into laughter, startling Kosmo so that the dog woofed and bounded back over from where he’d been sniffing at some bushes, tackling Lance in licks. Keith grinned and glanced back over his shoulder at the building they’d passed on the way over, perking up a little at the sight of a small group going inside.

He looked back at Lance, laughing and playfully wrestling with Kosmo, and then back at the car.

The trip could wait a little bit longer.

“Hey, looks like the hatchery gives tours. Wanna go check them out?”

“Hell yeah!”

~~

They spent the night in a motel in Billings, Montana, that allowed dogs inside. They’d requested a double, but when they got there, they found that it had been booked as a handicapped room, and neither of them wanted to take that room away from anyone who might need it, so they took the next available room the clerk offered.

Which happened to be a room with exactly one queen bed.

Lance shut the door behind them and tisked. “Sucks for you, I’m a cuddler.”

Keith hoped his face wasn’t as red as it felt. “Oh?”

At the lack of response, he looked up from where he’d been feeding Kosmo and found Lance looking at him. “Unless you’re not chill with that, in which case I’ve slept on worse surfaces than the floor. You grow up the youngest of five and you sleep in some _weird_ places, dude.”

“I can imagine,” Keith snorted, scratching Kosmo’s head absentmindedly while the dog ate. He was a little too thin for Keith’s liking – they’d have to ask the vet about it when they saw her. “Um. That’s fine, though. I’m not super cuddly? But if you’re trying to be courteous, knock it off. I don’t care.”

Lance’s lips twitched, and Keith wasn’t sure if he was trying not to frown or to laugh. “Just wanted to check. Not everyone is touchy feely, so I like to make sure.”

Keith stood and stretched, glancing at his watch and wincing. They’d left Minnesota early that morning, and they hadn’t stayed at the dam for longer than an hour or two, but it was still nearly midnight. “We should get some sleep. With luck, we can get to Portland by Tuesday at the latest.”

Lance was already shucking his shirt and climbing into bed – the side closest to the door, Keith noted with warm appreciation in his chest. Keith gave Kosmo one last pat and then turned to his bag, changing into shorts and a sleep shirt before crawling onto the other side of the bed. It felt simultaneously like the bed was miles long and also only inches.

“Night, dude,” Lance said, and Keith suddenly felt like there was a weird mood in the air. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t really know if it was genuinely there, or he was just imagining it, so he plugged his phone in and drew the covers up to his chin.

“G’night.”

~~

**_Day Six_ **

When Keith woke up, bleary, and checked his phone, it wasn’t even five am. He grunted, prepared to roll back over and go back to sleep, when he heard the softest whimper.

He would have thought it was from Kosmo, except a squint into the room, lit by the nightlight across from the bathroom, revealed the dog curled up on the floor and snoring softly. Another whimper, this one softer, and Keith rolled around to see Lance scrunching up his nose and pressing his face into his pillow.

He was still asleep, and it might have been dark, but Keith could just make out the glint of tears on his cheeks and the tremble of his shoulders.

Keith took a breath and moved without thinking, shifting across the foot of space between them until his shoulder was right next to Lance’s head. He shifted his arm across his body and pressed his hand to Lance’s bicep, shaking gently. “Lance,” he grunted, brain fully awake now even if his body was still groggy.

Lance jolted awake, eyes widening at the sight of Keith hovering there. He was clearly not entirely awake – even as he stared at Keith, his lashes were fluttering shut. They were still damp.

Keith swallowed and tugged gently on Lance’s arm. “C’mere,” he mumbled.

It didn’t take any further convincing – Lance latched onto him like a giant teddy bear, face pressing into Keith’s chest and arm wrapping tightly around his hip. Keith shakily set his left arm on Lance’s back and tucked his right arm under his head, prepared to spend the rest of the night wide awake.

He was asleep in less than ten minutes.

~~

Lance woke up with his nose pressed into the warm hollow of skin under Keith’s neck, his arm draped across Keith’s chest and his left leg tucked around Keith’s. He froze the moment he registered the position, body tensing, and he instantly moved his arm down to Keith’s stomach.

“You can keep it there,” Keith mumbled, and Lance’s heart leapt into his throat at the startling feeling of being caught. “’s okay.”

Heart pounding, Lance moved his arm back up to latch around Keith’s chest. It was then he registered the warm hand on his bare back, the tracing fingertips. He shut his eyes, heat pooling in his face. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Told you, s’okay,” Keith whispered.

“I mean…I mean about cuddling. Sorry.”

Keith stayed silent for a long time, long enough for Lance to get nervous and start to draw back, but Keith held him firmly in place. “You were having a nightmare,” Keith finally said. “Just…felt like you needed…dunno. This.”

Lance licked his lips and shut his eyes, relishing in the contact for one beat, two beats longer before speaking again. “What time ‘s it?”

“Almost ten,” Keith said.

That woke Lance up. He sat straight up, de-tangling their arms and legs, and slid out of bed. At Keith’s curious look, Lance pointed at the door. “Check out starts at ten. We need to get moving if we want to get to Portland in time.”

Keith cursed and swung his legs out of bed, walking for his bag and stripping his shirt off at the same time. Lance blinked quickly and then let the slow smile spread across his face, turning to his bag and gathering up his next change of clothes.

~~

“I’ve been everywhere man, I’ve been everywhere man, crossed the deserts bare man-”

“Keith I swear to god.”

“I breathed the mountain air, man.”

“No.”

“Of travel I’ve had my share man, I’ve been everywhere.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“I’ve been to Pittsburgh, Parkersberg, Gravelbourg, Colorado-”

“How much longer is this _song_?” Lance demanded.

“-Ellensburg, Rexburg, Vicksburg, Eldorado, Larimore, Atmore, Haverstraw, Chatanika-”

“I will literally pay you money to shut the fuck up.”

“Chaska, Nebraska, Alaska, Opelika, Baraboo, Waterloo, Kalamazoo-”

“How does your _breath_ last that long?”

“Kansas City, Sioux City, Cedar City, Dodge City, what a pity.”

Keith finally trailed off as Johnny Cash finished the rest of the song, and Lance resisted the urge to smack his head repeatedly on the wheel. “Never do that again,” he groaned, flexing his fingers on the wheel. “And I will never sing another Disney song.”

“Yeah, right.”

Lance snorted, leaning his elbow on the wheel and staring at the bumper to bumper traffic in front of him – according to Keith, there was a three car pileup a couple miles ahead that they were working on getting sorted out. It was late, nearing seven pm, and they’d been on the road pretty much all day. They’d stopped for lunch at a park, and for dinner in Missoula (in Lance’s words, he needed to “at least _try_ to bump into Hank Green” – they hadn’t) and to let Kosmo stretch his legs.

The dog in question was curled up in the back on the bed they’d picked up at the pet store, his nose tucked into his tail and his breathing quiet. He hadn’t been disturbed by the constant stopping and going of the van, which meant that they’d probably exhausted him in Missoula.

“That was payback for the Disney songs,” Keith clarified, like Lance hadn’t already known that.

Lance rolled his eyes and tapped his fingers along to the Make Out Monday that had come up on shuffle after Johnny Cash. “Frankly, I’m impressed you knew all the words.”

“Oh yeah?”

“You know I know every word to Yako’s Nations of the World?”

“I will physically get out of the car if you start singing it,” Keith deadpanned.

Lance giggled and shook his head, inching forward another six centimeters and then sighing, leaning his head against the head rest. “Looks like we’re gonna be here a while. Must have been a bad one.”

Keith hummed, glancing back down at his phone. He’d looked at it about twenty times since discovering it was an accident that was causing the hold up, and Lance was watching him carefully out of the corner of his eyes.

He didn’t want to make Keith feel like he was pitying him or trying to baby him, but he also wanted Keith to feel comfortable, and if seeing an accident was going to be triggering for him, Lance didn’t really want him to have to see it. He was glad they’d switched driving back in Missoula. At least if Keith started having an attack, he wouldn’t be in charge of a two ton vehicle.

“If you want,” Lance said easily, finger tapping speeding up as the song switched over to something by Baby Metal, “I’ve got a bunch of question lists saved.”

He could feel Keith looking at him. “Question lists?”

Lance kept one eye on the traffic and turned his head to look at Keith with an eyebrow raised. “Question lists? Like…questions we can ask each other? My roommate in college and I did them all the time. To get to know each other. Stuff like, what’s your favorite ice cream flavor?”

Keith frowned, tilting his head. “Moose Tracks, probably,” he said after a moment of clear contemplation.

Lance gave him a side grin. “Not surprising. I’m a mint chip guy, myself, but I can fuck with Moose Tracks.”

“What’s another one?” Keith asked, and Lance could hear the genuine curiosity in his question.

He bit back his smile and put his foot firmly on the brake, grabbing his phone and pulling up the lists he had saved before handing it off to Keith. “Just let me know when we’re getting close to the exit we need,” he said. “Pick anything, I’m a pretty open book.”

Keith scrolled for a second before his thumb stopped, hovering on the page while he read. “Do you believe in aliens?”

Lance grinned widely and settled back in his seat, preparing himself to be there a little while longer. “Hell yeah.”

~~

It was an hour later when they finally got around the traffic, and Lance had learned that Keith had done soccer as a kid, that he absolutely hated football, his favorite color was red, and his preferred condiment was soy sauce or barbeque.

The accident was cleared up by the time they passed it, luckily for them, and it was nearing nine pm.

“How much farther out?” Lance asked, glancing sideways at Keith as he scrolled through the lists on Lance’s phone.

Keith dragged down the map and pursed his lips. “Another thirty minutes til the exit. Looks like there shouldn’t be any more hold ups, and-”

He paused, and from the corner of his eye Lance could see a text notification pop up on screen. “Who is it?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow. “You can look.”

Keith’s thumb flicked up the screen and his lips parted. “Text from Hunk. He wants to know if you made it to the next place yet.”

“Oh yeah, Hunk was my roommate in college our junior and senior year, his actual name is-”

“Garrett?”

Lance blinked, looking over to find Keith now staring at Hunk’s contact information. “Um. Yeah. I mean no, that’s his last name, how did you-?”

Keith looked up, his eyes round. “I _know_ him. We took two courses the summer semester after my sophomore year together. Geology and astronomy.”

If Lance hadn’t been driving, he probably would have fallen out of his seat. As it was, it took a lot of concentration not to drive into the ditch in the middle of the road. “You _know him_?” Lance squeaked. “You’re from Maine, he took that summer course visiting his aunt and uncle in Arizona, how-?”

Keith scoffed. “I lived in Maine until I graduated highschool, lived in Arizona for college, and then moved back with my parents. Like Hunk and I don’t talk a lot, but we got along really well and he and I are friends on Facebook still.”

There was dead silence for a couple of minutes, and then Keith lifted the phone slowly. “Did…did you want me to respond?”

Lance let out a laugh of disbelief and grinned, shaking his head. He turned the light on in the car, shooting Keith a grin. “Send him a selfie.”

He could see the smile flickering at the corners of Keith’s mouth. “Yeah?”

“Dude, this is fucking _hysterical,_ hell yeah.”

Keith turned on the camera and flipped it around, holding it out and getting him and Lance in frame. “Ready?”

Lance studied the road and then nodded, turning his head to the camera long enough to shoot a surprised face at it, and then faced the road again, shutting the light off. Keith’s thumbs flew across the screen of Lance’s phone, sending Hunk the photo.

Lance didn’t let a lot of people touch his phone. Growing up with so many siblings, being the youngest of said siblings, and then having a niece and nephew constantly grabbing at everything, made one very cautious of their phone. Not to mention bad friends, bullies, the like…Lance was careful.

About the only people who were allowed to use his phone were Hunk, his high-school best friend Pidge, and his sister Rachel. Allura too, but he hadn’t actually gotten to see her since the summer after freshmen year of college, so it didn’t really matter. They were the only people in the world he trusted to pick up his phone and not use it against him (though Pidge could be known to change the password sometimes, and she had once set herself as the lock screen, so she was on thin ice).

So the fact that Lance felt little to no worry at all about Keith using his phone meant something. He wasn’t worried about him going through his photos or his contacts, searching through his personal notes, anything. Even when he’d pulled up Hunk’s contact picture, Lance hadn’t been upset. It just felt…normal.

Ugh, he needed to stop with the mushy feelings. Keith was…he was a friend. He’d started as a somewhat cranky acquaintance, and now he was a friend, and that was all he was. Even if Lance’s gut and heart did want him to be a little bit more than that. When he’d woken up that morning and found himself curled across Keith’s chest-

Well, the first thought in Lance’s head had just been pure panic. He wasn’t sure if he was crossing some sort of boundary, either with the cuddling or the chest touching. The second thought had been, “I haven’t been this comfortable in months.” And the third thought, when Keith had reassured him it was fine and that he wasn’t upset and that he could lay back down, had been, “I want to stay here.”

Lance fell hard. He knew that. Everyone who had known him longer than two months knew that. He’d never fallen quite so fast, though, and he was struggling not to let it happen (who was he kidding, it already had).

He let himself peek at Keith, who was now staring at the window, Lance’s phone loosely in his hand while he presumably waited for Hunk’s reply. The map was pulled up again, twisted in such a way that, Lance realized with a start, he could see it if he needed to.

The sun was nearly gone, the sky inky black all around them, save for a single speck of golden orange light in the distance. It was that that Keith was staring at, and the street lights they kept passing sent golden yellow flashes all across his face. They lit up his hair and his eyes and made him look soft, contemplative – ethereal, almost.

Lance’s mouth was dry.

He dragged his gaze back to the road and swallowed around the cotton feeling, licking his lips and trying to quell his pounding heart.

After they got to Portland, after the wedding, this…whatever _this_ was…would be over. Keith would stay with Shiro and his fiancé – he’d mentioned something about cat sitting during their questions – and Lance would continue on down to California to visit San Francisco, Hollywood, and everywhere in between. Keith would probably keep Kosmo, because Lance didn’t think he could travel alone with a dog, and Lance would be…

Completely and utterly alone.

Sure, they’d probably friend each other on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or one of the other 72 social media’s there were, and sure, this would be a fun story to tell for literally the rest of his life, but…

Lance swallowed again, mouth still dry but his throat aching with a lump that hadn’t been there two minutes ago.

Maybe this trip had been planned to be taken solo. Maybe at the beginning of all this he was a little bit annoyed with himself for opening his big fat mouth and offering to take a complete stranger across the country, effectively ruining his vacation. Maybe he was supposed to have done this alone.

But he didn’t want to finish it that way.

The thought smacked Lance across the face and then flipped him over it’s shoulder before he could recover, and he shut his eyes for just a second, fighting back the stinging pinpricks of tears and failing. He bit back the whimper that had crawled its way up his throat, and kept his gaze steady on the road, fingers tight on the wheel.

“Lance?”

He blinked rapidly, lashes wet, and tilted his head towards Keith to let him know he’d heard him. “Yeah?”

Keith was quiet for another second before speaking. “I said your name like twice, you okay?”

Lance chuckled dryly, hoping it came off as realistic. “Yeah, sorry dude, must have zoned out. What’s up?”

Another moment of quiet, where Lance fought not to look at Keith, because Keith would see the wetness of his cheeks, and then Keith spoke again. “The exit for the rest stop is coming up in the next two miles. We should probably get over.”

Lance nodded. “Right, right, got it. Did um…did Hunk respond?”

“Not yet. It hasn’t been opened yet, he must be doing something else. You sure you’re okay?”

And fuck, people double checking if he was okay was one of those things that made Lance fully break down. He tightened his hands on the wheel even more. “Yeah, I’m good dude. Promise.”

“Okay,” Keith said, but he sounded like he didn’t believe him, and honestly?

Lance didn’t blame him.

~~

**_Day Seven_ **

They had planned to skip Idaho entirely – they were only passing through the top tip of it, where there was nothing but farmland and racists, and Lance would swing back through the city of Boise eventually, so it didn’t take them more than a couple hours until they had gone from Montana to Washington state.

They drove through the night, Lance too anxious to stop and let Keith see how visibly shaken he was at the prospect of finishing his trip by himself. At some point, Keith dozed off, leaving Lance alone to his thoughts and the soft dinging of his phone – most likely Hunk, freaking out.

He stopped once for gas, shaking Keith awake silently so that he could stumble to the bathroom while Lance jogged Kosmo over to the darkened picnic area to pee. When he got back to the van, Keith was loading it with gas, squinting blearily at the numbers on the screen. Lance hesitated, easing open the back of the van and letting Kosmo hop inside, giving a faint smile as the dog licked his cheek and then curled back up and fell asleep again.

He checked his watch as he shut the trunk. It was nearing three am. They’d be in Seattle by seven. Lance knew he should be tired, but he was wired, fingers tapping at his thighs as he ran to the bathroom himself and came back just as Keith was putting the pump back.

Keith looked back over his shoulder at him. “You want me to drive?” he asked around a yawn.

Lance shook his head. “It’s okay. I’m wide awake. Thanks, though.”

He slid back into the driver’s seat and grabbed for his phone.

_Seventeen New Text Messages From: Hunk Garrett_

**_Hunk:_ ** _Dude_

**_Hunk:_ ** _Dude_

**_Hunk:_ ** _Are you kidding me_

**_Hunk:_ ** _I specifically told you NOT to pick up hitch hikers on your road trip_

**_Hunk:_ ** _And you’re telling me_

**_Hunk:_ ** _You picked up one_

**_Hunk:_ ** _In the first FIFTEEN MINUTES?_

**_Hunk:_ ** _AND IT HAPPENS TO BE MY STUDY BUDDY FROM MY SUMMER COURSES?????_

**_Hunk:_ ** _Dude wtf_

**_Hunk:_ ** _I mean like I guess there’s way worse people you could have picked up off the streets in Maine_

**_Hunk:_ ** _Is Maine like…even a breeding ground for shady people? Or just a bunch of pine tree freaks??_

**_Hunk:_ ** _Whatever_

**_Hunk:_ ** _I can’t fucking believe this_

**_Hunk:_ ** _You’re calling me next time you guys stop_

**_Hunk:_ ** _I swear to God if I don’t hear from you by this time tomorrow I will book a plane to your GPS location_

**_Hunk:_ ** _You know I could find it. And you._

**_Hunk:_ ** _Don’t try me_

Lance chuckled and shook his head, glancing sideways at Keith to see him typing furiously at his own phone, his tongue peeking out ever so slightly. Probably Shiro, Lance reasoned, and he went back to his own phone.

**_Lance:_ ** _Do u even know me? Of course I was going to ignore u lmao_

**_Lance:_ ** _And I’ll call u once we’re in Seattle and ur actually fucking awake_

**_Lance:_ ** _also like….lowkey having a romantic crisis over here sooooooo_

**_Lance:_ ** _BUT DON’T U DARE FUCKING TEXT ABOUT THAT UNTIL I SAY U CAN CAUSE KEITH KEEPS GOING THROUGH MY SPOTIFY ND I DON’T NEED THAT POPPING UP WHILE HE’S SEARCHING U ASS_

**_Lance:_ ** _Anywho love uuuuuuuuuuu have a good sleep fam_

Lance switched his phone back to the map and settled it on the mount on the windshield, looking over at Keith as he clicked off his own phone. “Shiro?” he asked.

Keith started, like he hadn’t been expecting Lance to speak to him. “Oh. Uh, no. A friend from college. She’s kind of a night owl, was asking if I made it to Oregon alive yet or if I got murdered.”

Lance snorted and eased out of the gas station, merging back onto the highway. “Ah, yes, I’m the most deadly of murderers. I’ll send her a photo of your dead body.”

Keith snorted. “I honestly think she’d love that. And then she’d kill you, of course.”

Lance grinned. “Sounds like one of my high-school friends. Cute but deadly. Likes weird shit. _Super_ tech genius-y, I have no idea what she’s talking about half the time. Could hack her way into the Pentagon if she tried, it’s kinda scary to be honest.”

Keith was quiet for a moment. “You went to high-school in Arizona, right?”

“Yup,” Lance said, popping the p. “Impressed you remembered that.”

“I’m going to have an aneurism if we’re talking about the same person.”

Lance’s eyebrows shot up and he looked over at Keith, as if he could see him in the dark. “What?”

“She graduated from high-school in Arizona.”

“I mean…” Lance trailed off. He’d been about to say it was a big state, but really, it wasn’t that populated. “What are the odds, right?”

“Katie Holt. Goes by Pidge?”

“Holy _shit._ ”

~~

So like, apparently their two best friends knew both of them. Which was weird enough for Keith to wrap his head around, but weirder still was the fact that he and Lance had _never_ crossed paths otherwise until a week ago.

Lance refused to let him tell Pidge that he was the one who was taking Keith to Oregon. “I want to Face Time her,” he said, his smile brighter than Keith had seen it all night (he hadn’t asked, but he had definitely noticed that Lance had been less than his usual, chipper self). “Like as soon as we get to Seattle and check into our hotel, we’re video chatting her and Hunk.”

“So she and Hunk know each other too?” Keith clarified.

Lance hummed, squinting into the rising sun. “They’ve met a couple times, when Pidge was visiting me at school in Florida. They’re both genius freaks, and I know they stayed in touch after we all graduated. And you know her from college?”

Keith nodded, shooting a text to Shiro to let him know they were close to Seattle. “Yeah. We lived across the hall from each other Freshmen year, and then since we couldn’t room together we just started getting rooms in the same dorms so we could hang out. Senior year we got singles next to each other.”

“Aw, cute,” Lance said in a teasing tone.

Keith didn’t mind the tease. It was all in good fun, and it meant that Lance was back to feeling better from whatever had him down before. “Adorable,” he deadpanned, leaning his cheek in his hand and pulling down the sun visor so he could see. “We’re sleeping when we get to Seattle, right?”

Lance clicked his tongue. “At least taking a nap,” he confirmed. “I don’t want to sleep _all_ day. I know we’re staying until tomorrow, but I do want to see some stuff today, y’know?”

“Let me guess, the space needle?”

“Do you go to Seattle for anything other than that, coffee, and rain?” Lance snorted.

Keith couldn’t help but grin. “Touché.”

“No, but I want to hit up the Olympic sculpture park too. I was reading about it online, it looks cool. Plus it looks over the ocean, which is like, my shit.”

“Noted. The ocean is your shit.”

~~

They didn’t end up calling Pidge or Hunk when they got to the hotel – instead, they checked in, took Kosmo on a quick walk around the grounds so he could do his business, fed him, and then they both passed out on their respective beds with Kosmo curled up at the foot of Keith’s. They slept through the morning and the early afternoon, and when Keith woke up, Lance was still sound asleep.

Kosmo yawned, his tongue lolling out of his mouth as he stretched and settled his head on Keith’s knee. Keith scratched the dog absentmindedly as he checked his phone for messages. His mom had sent him a text, letting him know that she’d be at the wedding since he was able to go now, and Pidge had sent him a follow up “you dead?” message since his last text to her at 4:30 in the morning.

He stood and cracked his neck, arching his back and pressing up onto his toes to stretch. Another quick look at Lance, and then he jotted down a note on the hotel stationary – “took Kosmo on a walk, back soon” – and then slipped his feet into his shoes and grabbed Kosmo’s leash. The dog bounced happily alongside him as Keith shut the door as quietly as he could behind them, pocketing his key card and heading for the stairs.

The early afternoon Seattle weather was sunnier than Keith expected. Granted, stereotypes were never truly accurate, but still, he’d expected at least a few more clouds. Kosmo stayed at his side perfectly, never straying or barking, and Keith couldn’t help but wonder again who had trained the dog, and why they’d gotten rid of the animal in such a heartless way. He took the dog off the hotel property and followed the sidewalk down the street full of shops that bordered the hotel, eyeing some of them thoughtfully.

A couple restaurants, a barber or two, a bookstore – he’d have to convince Lance to swing by that one before they left; it looked old, and Keith was a sucker for old bookstores – and a couple of stores that looked like they sold all kinds of odds and ends. There weren’t many tourists, from what Keith could see, for which he was grateful.

He didn’t plan to go into any of the shops, not with Kosmo in tow, so he pulled his phone from his pocket and brought up Pidge’s number, tapping his thumb against the call button and bringing it to his ear.

“Are you calling to tell me you’re dead and leaving everything you own to me?” she answered.

Keith snorted, stepping around a person and then making a loop around a lamppost, heading back for the hotel with Kosmo obediently at his side. “It’d be a sad amount of things, that’s for sure. Unless you want this dog.”

A long pause, where Keith pulled the phone away from his ear to make sure he hadn’t lost his connection, and then – “You got a DOG on your ROAD TRIP with a STRANGER?” she shrieked.

Keith grinned, completely awake now, and he nodded to the desk clerk as he walked back into the hotel and jabbed the elevator button with his thumb. “Yeah. Found him drowning in a river. We saved him together.”

“You did not.”

“Did.”

“Dude, that’s straight out of a friends to lovers fanfiction trope, are you kidding me?”

Keith bit his lip and swallowed his smile, watching the numbers tick down to his floor on the elevator panel. “I’m very aware, trust me. And it’s working.”

“It’s _working_?” Pidge screeched, and sometimes Keith forgot how pitchy her voice could be. “Bitch, I don’t even know him, he could be a child murderer!”

“Good thing I’m not a child then,” Keith deadpanned, stepping into the elevator and poking at the third floor button. “And he’s not a murderer, I think I’d be dead by now if he was.”

“You can’t have a crush on a murderer Keith, that’s not a good look for you.”

Keith rolled his eyes and tugged Kosmo off the elevator, swinging right and holding the phone between his ear and shoulder while he dug his keycard out of his pocket. “I mean, I once had a crush on a guy who’s currently in prison for embezzlement, so I feel like it would track, you know?”

“You’re not helping your argument,” Pidge snorted. “Seriously, dude, I know you’ve been with him nonstop for like…a week now, but be careful.”

Keith poked his head into the room to find Lance up and sitting on his bed, dressed save for his shoes and with his laptop open on his crossed legs. He gave Keith a small wave and a raised eyebrow. “Trust me, Pidge, he’s not evil,” he said, shutting the door behind him and unclipping Kosmo’s leash. Lance’s smile widened into something devilish that Keith had only seen when he was about to start singing another entire Disney soundtrack. “You know him.”

“I…huh?”

It felt good to stump Pidge – she was virtually un-stumpable. He pulled his phone away from his ear and hung up on her, and then immediately called back with video chat. She answered on the first ring, her eyes squinty behind her glasses. “Excuse me?” she demanded. “You hang up on me after _that_? The fuck do you mean, I-?”

Lance leaned in against Keith’s shoulder, his smile lighting up his whole face, and Pidge shrieked. “FUCK OFF!” she shouted, and her screen shook violently, like she was trying to get rid of the image. “Are you guys fucking SERIOUS? How the FUCK?”

“Pure coincidence,” Lance laughed, giving Pidge a wave. “S’up, Pidgeon?”

Pidge’s hand was over her mouth, eyes glittering, and suddenly they got an evil glint to them. She lowered her hand, smile sly, and turned her look to Keith. “So you’ve been travelling with _Lance_ this whole time? You rescued a _dog_ together?”

“Yes,” Keith said, squinting at her and silently daring her to say a single word. “It’s been a fun time.”

“Aw Keith, how sappy,” Lance teased, bouncing back to his bed. “We’ll have to call Hunk when he gets off work tonight. Pidge, I’ll see you on my trip through Arizona?” he called over his shoulder.

Pidge was still smirking at Keith, but she lifted her eyebrows and responded normally. “Absolutely! Does this mean I have to deal with Keith coming now too?”

Lance fell silent suddenly, looking up from his laptop. His smile had vanished, shoulders hunched where before they’d been relaxed. “Uh. Probably not, you’re stuck with me,” he joked, but Keith could tell his heart wasn’t in it.

And it was mutual. Keith hadn’t even thought of the fact that in less than 24 hours, he’d be at his brothers. In four days, his brother was getting married, and the next day, Lance would leave, and Keith would be house and cat sitting.

He didn’t want to. He wanted to keep going.

“Keith?”

He looked back at Pidge, whose evil smile had slipped into something more concerned. He hated that look on her – when Pidge got serious, it meant he looked genuinely upset. “Yeah?”

Pidge searched him for a moment and then gave him a tiny smile. “Have fun at Shiro’s wedding. You guys better keep me posted, this is insane.”

“Will do. Bye, Pidge.”

She gave him a peace sign and then his screen fell dark. Keith dropped his hand and huffed out a breath, looking over at Lance. The other man was staring firmly at his computer screen, fingers tapping at the keys, and Keith licked his lips and shut his eyes. “So. Sculpture garden?”

Lance looked up at him, lips parting, and then smiled softly. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

~~

As old as he got, Lance would never tire of watching the sun sink below the crest of the ocean. There was something about the way the sky burst into golds and pinks and oranges while it fell, leaving behind it an inky black trail that soon took over the colors and pushed them into the sea.

Sitting on the grass, leaned back on his hands and flicking his glance between the setting sun and Keith, who was teaching Kosmo to fetch in the field to his left, he smiled. Tracked Keith’s movements as the ball arced through the air and hit the dirt several yards away, Kosmo’s pattering feet scampering after it and his maw closing up around it with ease. He was a fast learner; he had picked up fetch in less than fifteen minutes. Granted, Lance had never owned a dog before, just cats and some chickens, back in Cuba, but he was still impressed.

The hollow feeling in his stomach from the last 24 hours had eased a bit – he was still upset and tired and kind of depressed about Keith leaving, or rather, leaving Keith behind, but the more he hung out with Keith today, the more he’d realized they’d be fine. They’d be friends. And sure, his trip might be a little more boring, but it wouldn’t mean they’d just suddenly stop talking to each other.

Which was good, because Lance liked talking to Keith. If that hadn’t been obvious to him before, it was now, after spending a good three hours in the sculpture garden under the shadow of the Space Needle. Jokes passed easily between them, sly remarks about different sculptures, teasing jabs, all backed with genuine enjoyment and laughing. Lance had always liked sculpture parks – they were a great way to learn about the local history, and local artist culture, but he’d never found someone who would join him in walking through them who appreciated the art while simultaneously joking about it.

Keith flopped down on the grass next to Lance, breathless, and grunted as Kosmo ran into his lap with the ball in his mouth, chuffing and nosing at Keith’s face. Keith laughed, pushing Kosmo back and ruffling his fur with his fingers, and Lance swallowed, turning his gaze back to the nearly gone sun and trying to make his heart calm down. “Get tired?” he asked, drawing his knees up and wrapping his arms around them.

Keith finally wrestled Kosmo off his lap and threw the ball away from them. They watched Kosmo bound after it, scooping it up in his mouth and then getting distracted by a couple little kids playing tag. They watched him closely while Keith answered. “He’s got a lot of energy. Definitely think he’s got some Husky in him. I was thinking…maybe you should take him with you. When you leave Shiro’s.”

Lance looked at him in surprise, momentarily forgetting about the kids. “What?”

Keith shrugged, rubbing his palms together and not looking at Lance. He kept his gaze on Kosmo. “I just think, high energy dog, high energy trip.”

Lance licked his lips and tightened his arms around his knees. “Um.” Turned his gaze back to the dog. “I think he likes you better, is all. Plus it’s not like he’d get to exercise a ton stuck in the car all day.”

“He’s been doing pretty well so far,” Keith pointed out.

Lance twined his fingers together, twisting hard enough to sting, which took his attention off the ache in his chest. He wasn’t sure how to say, “I don’t want the dog if you don’t come with him,” without sounding completely head over heels. “I’ll think about it,” he finally settled on, tilting his head as one of the kids got the ball from Kosmo’s mouth and threw it for him.

He could feel Keith watching him now, but refused to look over. After a long moment of silence, Keith whistled, and Kosmo pricked his ears up, woofed at the kids, scooped up the ball, and sprinted back over to them.

Lance kept his eyes on the darkening horizon. It was no longer as satisfying as it had been.

~~

**_Day Eight_ **

Keith pulled into Shiro’s driveway with trepidation – he knew he and Lance had been awkward since last night, and he wasn’t quite sure why. They’d gone to the Space Needle that morning before leaving Seattle, and Lance had been weirdly quiet the whole time. Had barely even commented on the ironic rain as they visited.

Shiro had always been very perceptive of people’s feelings, even strangers. Even before his accident, he’d been studying to be a psychologist. His determination on that had strengthened after he lost his arm, and now he was fully practicing. Keith hated it when he psychoanalyzed him; he didn’t want him doing it to Lance, especially when it seemed like Lance wasn’t quite in the mood for some reason.

Not to mention, Keith hadn’t finished his speech. He’d spent every quiet moment working on it, in the car, at the hotels, in his head while driving. He had a couple of bad jokes, some sappy thoughts, and no rhyme or reason to anything.

He put the car in park and shut it off, glancing sideways at Lance. Behind them, Kosmo had sat up – he knew when the car turned off, he got to run around. “Ready?” Keith asked.

“Are you?” Lance countered, lifting an eyebrow and eyeing Keith’s hands, still tight on the wheel. “He’s your brother, what’s he gonna do, bite?”

Keith relaxed his hands and gave a smile. “You never know.” He paused, twisting the keys in his hands and then handing them over to Lance. “Just…nervous. Still don’t have the speech done.”

“You still have three full days,” Lance pointed out. He opened the door first, and Keith would be damned if a stranger greeted Shiro before his own brother, so he shoved his own door open and climbed out.

Probably Lance’s plan all along, Keith realized as Lance went to the trunk for Kosmo instead of heading for the door.

Before he could do more than take a single step from the driver’s side, the front door opened and Shiro stepped out. Something about the sight of him, of his stupid grin and his dumb tuft of white hair, so familiar, made Keith relax and smile back.

He was engulfed in a hug before he could register Shiro moving, and he sighed, wrapping his arms tightly around his sibling and shutting his eyes for a minute. He hadn’t seen Shiro in almost a year and a half, so being here, now, after being so certain a week ago he’d never get to see this moment in person, hit harder.

Shiro pulled away, squeezing Keith by the shoulders, and then looked over his head. “I take it you’re not a murderer, then?” he asked, a twinkle in his eye.

Keith turned, falling easily under Shiro’s arm, to see Lance standing there, Kosmo’s leash in one hand and his other hand tucked into his pocket as he watched them, a tiny smile on his face. “No sir.”

Shiro rolled his eyes. “Don’t sir me. I’m 27, not a grandpa. Lance, right?”

Lance’s lips quirked into a bigger smile and he reached his free hand out, which Shiro clasped firmly. “Yes. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Shiro shot Keith a suspicious look. “Whatever he’s said about me, he’s lying.” Then, a little more seriously, “ _Thank_ you. You have no idea what this means to me. Bringing him here.”

Lance dropped Shiro’s hand and rubbed the back of his neck with a chuckle, shaking his head. “Like I said. I was heading this way anyhow. It was the least I could do.”

Shiro let his arm fall from Keith’s shoulders and he stepped forward, gripping Lance’s shoulders gently. “It really wasn’t.”

Without missing a beat, Shiro dropped to his knees and was instantly tackled in excited kisses by Kosmo. Curtis stepped out of that house in that moment, Keith was swept up in another hug, and the next couple minutes swirled by in a whirlwind of bag grabbing, car locking, and Kosmo tripping everyone.

“We only have the one guest bedroom,” Curtis explained to them as he led them inside while Shiro volunteered to run Kosmo around the yard for a few minutes. “But we set up an air mattress in there as well. You guys can fight over that one.”

“We literally slept in a tent the other day,” Lance snorted. “We’ll be okay. Thank you, Curtis.”

Curtis’ smile was warm – he was taller than Keith remembered him being. “Of course. Nothing going on tonight or tomorrow morning, of course, but Keith, Shiro has a fitting for your suit scheduled in the afternoon. Lance, I thought since you were doing a tour of the country, I could show you around Portland while they do that.”

Keith watched Lance’s eyes light up in front of him. “I’d love that, thank you!”

“Thursday we’re going over some last minute stuff with florists and the venue decorators,” Curtis explained, leading them upstairs, “and then Friday is the dress rehearsal. But there should be some free time Wednesday and Thursday night, Shiro and I were hoping to take you guys to dinner if we’re not all too tired.”

“I’d be down,” Lance confirmed, tilting his head. His eyes widened as they hit the top of the stairs. “No way, you guys have a tiny kitchen UPSTAIRS?”

Curtis laughed, and Keith grinned. “Not quite a full kitchen,” Curtis explained, walking into the kitchen-like nook, which was filled with floor to ceiling windows that looked out on Shiro and Kosmo in the front yard. “A sink, some cabinets, and coffee and tea stuff. Little sitting area,” he said, gesturing to the bar stools and table.

Keith leaned over and whispered conspiratorially. “Shiro gets cranky if he doesn’t have his coffee first thing. Made Curtis build it in so he didn’t have to go more than five steps to make coffee.”

Curtis was chuckling, but he didn’t deny it. Lance, however, looked impressed. “You built that?” he asked as they walked further down the hall to the guest room.

“I’m a carpenter and I graduated with a degree in architecture,” Curtis said, smile wide. “Shiro only likes me for my talents.”

Keith snorted and shoved Curtis gently as they walked into the guest room. Lance immediately put his stuff on the air mattress, and before Keith could even open his mouth to protest, he held up a hand. “Save it, Mullet. Your brother, your bed.”

Curtis burst into laughter, and Keith could only stare, jaw hanging a little.

“ _Mullet_?”

~~

**_Day Nine_ **

Keith hated tuxedos. Hated ties, hated suits and fancy shoes that pinched his toes and dumb cuff links that he could never figure out how to attach without losing a piece. He’d worn suits three times in his life: the first time at his father’s funeral, once at his junior year homecoming dance, and the third time was at Shiro’s great aunts funeral.

Needless to say, he didn’t really have a lot of fond memories with suits.

However, Shiro had good taste.

“This…isn’t bad,” Keith admitted, twisting a little on the seamstresses’ stool to get a better look at the back of himself in the mirror. “You did a good job.”

The tux was a deep red color (the seamstress – Romelle, who Shiro had known since college – had called it a burgundy red wine), with a black shirt underneath it. Instead of a bow tie, Shiro had been merciful and given him a matching red tie. The lapels of the tux were black, and the back of the tux had the smallest slit in it that Keith silently thought made him look like a penguin, but everything else about the tux was great, so he didn’t say anything.

Shiro was rattling Keith’s cuff links (a pair of shooting stars) in his hand, leaning against the wall as Romelle made some alterations to the length of the pant legs and cuffs. “Thank you. I like to think I know what my brother is okay with wearing. Is Lance coming to the ceremony?”

Keith shifted on his heel at Romelle’s request, putting his back to Shiro and eyes to the mirrors. “Yeah. I…asked him to. You know, formally. Since he did so much to get me here.”

“Mmhmm,” Shiro hummed, a little too knowing for Keith’s liking. Keith shot him a glare in the mirror. “Right. So I was just imagining the fond little look you gave him when he was laughing at Curtis’ joke this morning?”

Keith caught sight of Romelle biting back a smile in the mirror and he pursed his lips, well aware that he was pouting. “Yes.”

“Gotcha, gotcha,” Shiro said, clicking his tongue and looking down at the cufflinks again. “And the uh,” he coughed into a fist, “the fact that you guys basically adopted a dog together in the first week of knowing each other?”

Romelle’s cheeks were rosy now as she moved to work on his sleeve length, and her smile was no longer hidden. “He was _drowning_ ,” Keith protested. “And he’s adorable.”

“Kosmo or Lance?”

“I’m going to murder you in your sleep.”

“I didn’t hear a no.”

Keith shot Romelle a look. “Was he this annoying in college too?”

“Oh absolutely,” she said sagely, pinning his cuff closer to his wrist. “Wouldn’t stand still like, ever, when he was helping me with a project.”

“You _poked me_ ,” Shiro squawked. “On PURPOSE!”

Keith bit back a laugh and turned back to the mirror as Romelle and Shiro dove into playful, friendly banter, lifting his free hand to run his fingers down the lapel of his tux, eyeing it thoughtfully in the mirror.

He wondered if he would get to keep it.

~~

They met Lance and Curtis at a local pizzeria around 5:30, walking in to the sight of the men chuckling and nursing a hard cider each. Shiro immediately slid in next to his fiancé, pecking him on the cheek, and Keith sank down next to Lance, noting the bag on the other side of him. “You guys do some shopping?” he asked, snatching the menu from in front of Lance.

Lance didn’t even protest the theft, just grinned. “Yeah! Curtis took me to some really cool places. We found this bookstore I think you’d really like, and I got a book for my mom.”

Keith could practically feel Shiro’s wicked smirk, so he lifted the menu up to block his brother out. “Sounds great,” he said sincerely. “You guys will have to take me. Curtis, what’s good here?”

When he lowered the menu, he could see Curtis smiling, eyes glittering like he knew something Keith didn’t. Which, all things given, was likely, but Keith didn’t like it nonetheless. “Everything is really good, but I’m partial to the margherita pizza. Alexis does a great job on that one, it’s like she was born for it.”

Lance whistled low. “Wow, you guys know their names here and everything.”

Curtis chuckled, taking a swig of his cider. “Lived here almost my whole life, I’d hope so.”

Keith set his menu down – if Curtis recommended it, he’d try it. His taste was almost as good as Hunk’s.

Keith smiled at the thought of the man; they’d video chatted with him the night prior, much to his excitement, and explained the whole situation pretty thoroughly, introducing him to Kosmo and everything. Keith forgot how much he liked Hunk – he was excited to have a good reason to connect with him again.

That was, of course, if he and Lance actually stayed in contact after this. Of course he knew they would: you didn’t experience something like they had and just move on. But Keith had had those thoughts about hundreds of people in his life. Foster kids he’d sworn to always write, whose names he couldn’t remember. Foster siblings that had promised they’d keep in contact, who never had. Even Hunk, to a degree. Sure, Keith liked his Instagram posts now and then, and Hunk wished him a happy birthday every year, but still.

He didn’t want that with Lance. He wanted not to call him on his birthday, but to be there for it. Wanted to do more than just write.

The waitress came up and he blinked a little, giving her his order quickly and then whipping his phone out, pulling up Pidge’s texts while everyone was still ordering.

**_Keith:_ ** _Yeah. Pretty sure its more than a crush_

**_Keith:_ ** _you cant tell him that though_

**_Keith:_ ** _please Pidge_

**_Pidge:_ ** _you guys are such idiots_

**_Pidge:_ ** _what are you gonna do?_

**_Keith:_ ** _idk. Probably just fling myself off a cliff somewhere_

**_Pidge:_ ** _lmk when you do, I wanna film_

**_Keith:_ ** _gee thanks_

**_Pidge:_ ** _dude for real tho, talk to him. Lance is a sweet guy, he wouldn’t do anything to hurt anyone. Tell him I said that tho and I will drop you off the cliff myself_

**_Keith:_ ** _noted. Maybe. After Shiro’s wedding though._

**_Pidge:_ ** _Yeet. And Keith?_

**_Keith:_ ** _?_

**_Pidge:_ ** _I’ve said it a million times, but you’re such a dumbass_

“Texting Pidge?” Lance asked, leaning ever so slightly over his shoulder.

Keith practically squeaked, shutting his phone off instantly and hoping his face wasn’t bright red. Shiro and Curtis were gone, he noted, probably running up to the bar for more drinks. “Um,” he managed, setting his phone face down on the table. “Yeah. I was telling her about the wedding prep.”

Lance hummed, swirling his straw around his water. “How was shopping? I can’t imagine you in a suit, dude.”

Keith snorted, relaxing a little. “Good. I hate them.”

“Why? I’m sure you’d be hot.”

Keith shot him a look and Lance grinned, nudging him with his elbow. “Teasing. Mostly.”

“It was fine,” Keith said with a shrug. He looked up towards the bar and caught Shiro watching with a smirk, flipped him off. “I still don’t have this stupid speech written. And I’m not good at just…winging it.”

Lance hummed, sinking down in his seat and taking another drink of his cider. “I wish I had advice, dude. But he’s your brother. Whatever you write, he’s probably gonna cry. Make it a story, if that helps. That’s what my brother did. He just told a bunch of stories.” He shot Keith a grin. “But tell them better than he did, he can’t tell a story to save his life.”

“Noted,” Keith snorted, taking the offered beer from Curtis as the two rejoined the table.

“What’s noted?” Shiro asked, sitting down next to Curtis.

“What an idiot you are.”

“In that case, you’re buying your own dinner. Lance, I’m still buying for you.”

Lance put a hand over his heart and gave Shiro a nod. “Much obliged, good sir.”

“Teacher’s pet.”

“The best.”

~~

**_Day Ten_ **

The florists for the wedding were clearly in over their heads, if the frazzled looking head of the floral shop was any sign.

Lance was bored. He was hanging out at the venue because he didn’t really have anything else to do for the rest of the day – he’d already taken Keith to the cool bookstore Curtis had shown him, and he didn’t really want to do anything else alone, so he was hanging out at one of the empty bars in the room. In two days, it would be full of alcohol and drunks, but for the moment, it was the only empty space in the room to sit.

Shiro was calming the head of the floral committee about something regarding ribbons, and Curtis was across the room at the DJ’s booth talking to who Keith had informed him was Curtis’ brother, Alexander. He was a professional DJ as a side gig, apparently, and had jumped at the opportunity to do the music for the wedding.

They had been going over song selections for the last ten minutes, and Lance was enjoying the various music that was coming on over the speakers.

A huff, and then Keith was collapsing in the bar stool next to him, running a hand through his hair in a way that was unfairly attractive. His short sleeves were rolled up to practically a tank top (also unfairly attractive), and he kicked his shoe against Lance’s leg. “Next time, _don’t_ ask the random stranger at the gas station if they want a ride across the country,” he groaned.

Lance grinned, setting his phone down. “Shiro put you to work?”

Keith rolled his eyes. “Curtis, actually. Been lugging sound equipment for the last thirty minutes. Where have _you_ been?”

“Perk of being the guest my dude, I don’t have to do shit.”

Keith slapped him lightly on the arm and Lance snickered, turning his ear towards the ceiling. “Come on, you have to admit, the music is good. Curtis’ brother has great taste. People are gonna be dancing all night.”

Keith snorted. “Not me. I do not dance.”

“Oh you’re just _begging_ for me to break into a High School Musical 2 song, aren’t you?”

“If you do I will find the nearest cliff and punt you off of it.”

Lance grinned and shook his head. “Point. But seriously, you gotta dance at least a little bit. Shiro will probably drag you out if you don’t. Hell, _I’ll_ drag you out if you don’t.”

Keith pursed his lips and drummed his fingers on the table. Lance studied him for a moment, taking in his hunched shoulders, and then hopped off his stool. “Come on.”

Keith lifted an eyebrow slowly at Lance. “Excuse me?”

Lance held out his hand. “Come on. Everyone here is stressing, let’s dance.”

Keith frowned, glancing towards the DJ booth. “This…this is REO Speedwagon,” he noted. “For real?”

Lance offered him what he knew was a wild grin. “And even as I wander, I’m keeping you in sight,” he taunted, wiggling his fingers. “You’re a candle in the window on a cold dark winter’s night. And I’m getting closer than I ever thought I miiiiiggghhhhtttt!”

Keith rolled his eyes, but he was smiling, and he finally took Lance’s hand and let him pull him onto the floor. Lance spun him for dramatic effect, making sure they looked as stupid as possible. Lance had found, through years of trial, error, and self-consciousness, that if you acted like you were being stupid on purpose, you felt less stupid.

“Crank it up!” Shiro whooped from across the room.

“And put on something better!” called someone Lance recognized as being maybe related to Shiro somehow. “I can’t dance to this!”

Lance laughed, draping his arms around Keith’s shoulders and drawing him in just a little closer. When he looked back at Keith, the man was staring at him, lips parted, eyes wide, and Lance loosened the grip a little. “Sorry. We can stop if you want, just felt like everyone needed a break.”

He started to pull back and Keith’s arms tightened around his waist such a miniscule amount that Lance almost didn’t notice it. “No. No, it’s…this is fun.”

_“Let’s have some fun this beat is sick, I wanna take a ride on your disco stick.”_

“ALEXANDER MICHAEL SCOTT, THERE ARE CHILDREN HERE!” shrieked Curtis’ mother from the other side of the venue.

Lance and Keith looked at one another and burst into laughter.

~~

“Shiro lives in a nice neighborhood,” Lance mused, thumbing the release of Kosmo’s leash thoughtfully without clicking it, waiting for the dog to stop taking such an interest in the sock that was squished into the sewer grate.

Hunk, who was on the phone with him, hummed. “Oh yeah? Like rich nice, or like, the neighbors actually give a shit about each other nice?”

Lance snorted. “The second one. Definitely the second one.”

“Noted. I’ve never been to Portland, what’s it like?”

“Pretty much the same as Seattle, if I’m being honest,” Lance chuckled. “I’m sure people would skin me alive if they heard me say that, though. It’s like comparing New York City to Miami, or Pittsburgh to Cleveland.”

“Okay, but Cleveland and Pittsburgh are basically the same,” Hunk pointed out.

“But Pittsburgh’s rivers haven’t caught on fire like, six times.”

“Touché. What time is the wedding?”

Kosmo tugged at the leash, apparently no longer interested in the sewer sock, and dragged Lance on to the next interesting thing, which appeared to be a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger wrapper from Wendy’s. “Three, on Saturday,” Lance said, pulling Kosmo away before he could try to eat the paper. “Reception starts sometime around four or five, depending how long the vows take. They didn’t want to make everyone sit super long, especially the little kids that are coming. I’m leaving Sunday morning.”

Hunk was quiet for a moment, which gave Lance time to pick up the cheeseburger wrapper and shove it into a trash can while Kosmo continued sniffing the streets. “Do you _want_ to leave?”

Lance scoffed. “Um, duh? I’ve been planning this trip for months.”

“Okay, rephrase: do you want to leave alone?”

And that made Lance fall quiet, because no, no he didn’t. “You’re perceptive,” he said softly.

As if sensing the shift in the mood, Kosmo calmed down and trotted back to Lance’s side, licking at his hand and whining. Lance scratched him behind the ears and turned back towards the house.

“Lance, you literally told me you liked Keith. Plus, I could see it when we video chatted the other night. It’s not perception, it’s obvious.”

“He’s staying to take care of Shiro and Curtis’ cat – who Kosmo loves, for some reason, I don’t know how anyone could get rid of him, he’s the _sweetest-_ ”

“Lance.”

Lance sighed, looking up as Shiro and Curtis’ house came into view again. “He’s staying. He already promised them. And their honeymoon is like two weeks, it’s not like I can just stay the whole time. I only have so much time before I have to start up lesson plans for the kids again.”

Hunk sighed, and Lance could practically see the disappointed look on his face. “Okay, dude. Just…I know you have plans. And he has plans. And I’m all for plans, I am. But I’m also for following your gut. And your heart.”

Against his will, tears sprung up to Lance’s eyes and he stopped walking, confusing Kosmo. He shut his eyes, giving himself a moment, and let out a shaky breath. “You suck, you know that?”

“Love you too, buddy.”

Lance chuckled, lifting his teary eyes to the dark night sky. “Have a good rest of your afternoon, dude.”

“Good night, Lance.”

~~

**_Day Eleven_ **

Keith woke up early on Friday to find Lance already gone from his air mattress. He got dressed quickly, not surprised when he opened the door and found Lance in the upstairs coffee nook, swinging socked feet against the legs of the bar chair and sipping on a cup of what smelled like Early Gray while he stared out the windows.

He gave Keith a soft smile, one that he usually wore in the mornings, and nodded to the kettle on the counter. “Still some left. If you want. I also started a pot of coffee,” he murmured, keeping his voice low. Shiro and Curtis were still sleeping, then.

Kosmo was curled in front of the windows, Shiro’s cat Noir tucked up against his side and purring like her life depended on it. Keith grabbed a mug and a bag of English Breakfast, pouring honey and hot water in and then joining Lance at the bar table, poking him in the shin with his own socked toe. “Couldn’t sleep?” he asked, playing with the tea bag.

Lance hummed. “Nah, I slept fine. Just woke up early. Wanted some quiet time.”

Keith instantly felt like he was intruding. “I can go if you-”

Lance reached out, settled a hand on Keith’s arm before he could even start to move. “No,” he said, gentle. “You’re okay.”

He removed his hand slowly, and Keith found himself almost wishing that he would put it back. Instead of saying that, though, and looking like a dumbass, he stirred his tea again. They sat in silence for a couple minutes, sipping their teas and watching the sun crest over the horizon.

“Nervous?” Lance asked, startling Keith a bit.

He cleared his throat, wrapping his hands tight around the warmth of his mug. “About?”

Lance nudged him with his foot again. “The wedding, dumbass.”

“Yeah, I’m still not super far on the speech.”

“Not the speech,” Lance said, taking another swig of his tea. “The wedding.”

Keith furrowed his brows. “Why would I be nervous about that?”

Lance shrugged, setting his mug down. “It’s your brother. I was nervous when my brother got married. It’s different. That’s all.”

He understood what Lance meant. After all the shit Keith had been through, he was surprised he wasn’t more nervous. “Shiro met Curtis when I was still in college,” he said softly, tapping his nails on the outside of the mug. “Like, a freshmen in college. A little over five years ago. Heh. He sat me down the second week they were dating and told me that if I ever felt like he wasn’t listening to me or respecting my space, to tell him. That he’d adjust his behavior, or leave, if that was what it took.”

Keith took a drink of his tea, keeping the mug close to his face to feel the steam. “That was the first time an adult had ever sat me down and told me they’d listen to me, if I needed them to. Outside Shiro and our moms, of course. And he has. Listened to me, I mean. Shiro’s past boyfriends…all of them were nice, I guess. None of them listened the way Curtis does. They all had their beliefs on what was best for him, even best for me sometimes. Treated him like he wasn’t able to fend for himself because of his disability. Treated me like I was fragile when they found out I was trans.”

Keith chuckled, lowering his gaze to the table. “One of them tried to get me to stop wearing binders for weeks after he found out, because he was convinced they were hurting me. Except I’d already had my top surgery. He just wouldn’t listen to me.”

He looked back up at Lance, who was watching him with a soft, open expression, one that made Keith’s heart stutter in its tracks. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to lean over and kiss him. He refrained, swallowed, tightened his grip on his mug. “Curtis has never done that. He’s always listened. The first time. I respect him. I trust him with my brother. And I trust Shiro to do what’s right, for him _and_ Curtis. I’m not nervous.”

The smile that blossomed over Lance’s cheeks was gentle and full of delight. “And you’re worried about your speech,” he chuckled, rolling his eyes and taking another sip of his tea.

Keith blinked. “What?”

Lance motioned his mug at him. “Your speech. That was perfect, dude. You just needed to stop thinking so hard.”

“I-”

Keith sat back, stunned, thinking over what he’d just said. Something in his chest warmed, and he locked gazes with Lance, a stunned smile slipping over his cheeks. “Thank you.”

Lance shook his head, gaze glittering at him over the top of his mug. “All you, dude. All you.”

~~

The dress rehearsal was a disaster. Lights flickered, tables collapsed, one of the flower vases was too close to a candle and caught fire, and the music kept cutting out for reasons that Alexander couldn’t figure out.

Curtis and Shiro remained optimistic – “Bad dress rehearsal, perfect performance!” Curtis kept reminding everyone throughout the night. He’d been a theater kid, Shiro had informed them by the third time he’d said it.

Still, Lance and Keith could both tell that even the husbands to be were exhausted by the end of the night. So instead of going back home with them, they climbed into Blue and drove into Portland, driving through the streets with the music playing low in the background.

They stopped for ice cream at a mom and pop shop, Lance getting mint chip and Keith a scoop of Rocky Road, before driving and parking in the lot of an entrance to a hiking trail. “What’s your third favorite cereal?” Lance asked, licking the side of his cone to catch a drip.

Keith chuckled. “Third?”

“Yeah. First is too boring.”

“And second?”

“Eh. Third.”

Keith thought for a moment, chewing on a marshmallow. “Honey Nut Cheerios. First in Cinnamon Toast, second is French Toast.”

“Dude, Cinnamon Toast Crunch is my favorite too. Second is Frosted Flakes, third is specifically the chocolate strawberry Special K.”

Keith wrinkled his nose, looking over at Lance in disgust. “Special K? Really?”

Lance pointed his ice cream cone at him. “Don’t knock it until you try it.”

“Oh I will.”

They fell quiet again, the radio soft and almost inaudible. “Really think tomorrow is going to go okay?” Keith asked, biting into his cone.

“I mean, unless evil aliens suddenly invade Earth and destroy the whole planet, I don’t think anyone is going to stop Shiro and Curtis from getting married. I’ve only known them for like, three days, and even I can tell they’re infatuated with each other,” Lance chuckled. “They’re ready to be married, no matter what the universe says.”

“And then after tomorrow?” Keith asked, trying not to sound too interested.

“After?”

“When uh…when you leave.”

“Oh.”

The car fell quiet again, more tense this time, and Keith stared at the remainder of his cone. “I’m leaving Sunday morning,” Lance said, throwing the rest of his own cone out the window. “And I’m not going to take Kosmo. I don’t want him to be cooped up in the car, and I don’t think I can handle him on my own.”

Keith pursed his lips. “So that’s it, then,” he murmured.

“Yeah. Guess it is.”

Lance started the car again, sudden, with a little more aggression than Keith was anticipating. He was nervous, suddenly. “Lance? You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You sure? Cause-?”

“I don’t want to go alone, okay?” Lance whispered, snappy. “I…I offered this trip to you because I felt bad, and now I don’t want to finish it alone. You…”

He trailed off, silent as he merged streets to get back to Shiro’s. Keith stayed quiet, stunned. “You made the trip better,” Lance muttered, so quiet Keith had to strain to hear him. “And I don’t want to do the rest of it without you.”

“That’s…that’s so nice, Lance. But I can’t…I mean, I promised Shiro. Plus like…we’ve only known each other for like…less than two weeks. Even just what we’ve done is a weird trip to make.”

Even as he said the words, Keith’s brain was shouting at him to shut up. To tell the truth: that he wanted to go with Lance, that he wanted to go with Lance as more than the friends they’d become.

But his brain was dumb, and his fear was dumber, and he said the words without thinking. They’d been the wrong ones, he realized the moment they finished falling from his lips. Lance’s grip tightened on the wheel.

“Right. Guess you have to know people for a certain length of time to actually be real friends,” he said under his breath, full of snark that Keith had never heard used so angrily until this moment.

“Lance, I-”

“It’s fine, Keith. It’s fine.”

It wasn’t fine.

~~

**_Day Twelve_ **

Keith stood in front of the mirror holding his tie loose in his hands, staring with irritation at the bags under his eyes and the rumpled look of his hair. Behind him, Shiro was having his hair fussed over by his uncle, trying to get the stupid white floof to stay back with the rest.

He hadn’t spoken to Lance at all that morning. In fact, when he’d woken up, Lance was gone, and the only reassurance he’d had that he hadn’t just up and left all together was the fact that his bag was still at the foot of his air mattress. Shiro had assured him that he’d probably just gone on a drive to clear his head, but Keith wasn’t going to be surprised if he didn’t show up to the wedding.

“Keith?”

Keith looked up, startled, to find Krolia standing in the doorway. She was tanner than the last time Keith had seen her, her hair buzzed close to her head on the sides. She was in a dark purple suit, a handkerchief in the pocket in lieu of a tie, and she gave him a small smile.

“Mom,” he said, feeling the tiniest ounce of relief in his bones. “You made it.”

Krolia gave Shiro a wave and moved over to Keith, taking the tie from him and throwing it around his neck. She’d been in the military for eight years, could have easily choked him with the fabric, but her touch was light and gentle as she twisted the tie around. “Of course I did. I told you I would, right? Now tell me what’s on your mind.”

“How-?”

“You look like shit, honey. What happened?”

Keith sighed, running his hand through his hand again. “You remember Lance?”

“Yes, the young man who brought you here. Where is he? I thought I’d be meeting him,” Krolia said, much too casually for her to not know what Keith was about to say.

“We got in a fight last night,” Keith mumbled. “Kinda. I mean…it wasn’t really a fight, I guess. Just…I think there was a miscommunication. Or maybe mixed signals. He doesn’t want to keep going on his trip alone. He wants me to come.”

“Do you want to go?”

Keith faltered, looking down as she looped the tie into a complete knot and tucked it into his tux. “I mean…yeah. But I can’t,” he said, lowering his voice so Shiro wouldn’t hear him. “I have responsibilities.”

Krolia cupped his cheeks and lifted his face to look at her. “We all do, honey. But what you _want_ matters too. Don’t forget that. Ever.”

He gave her a small smile. “Thanks, Mom.”

“Course. Now come here, I’ve got hair spray, a hair tie, and concealer, we’re getting your head under control if it kills me. And it might.”

“Gee, thanks.”

~~

Keith did genuinely cry during the ceremony, but he held it mostly together. He perused the crowd time and time again during the pastor’s remarks, but couldn’t spot Lance. He didn’t know if that was because Lance wasn’t there or if it was just because there was a pretty large crowd – Curtis had a huge family. Regardless, he tried not to let his mind linger. He was here for Shiro and Curtis, for them, not for Lance and the weird friendship he’d somehow managed to fuck up. Like he fucked up every relationship with people in his life.

He held it together through the vows and the rings and the kissing, all the way to the reception, where he promptly collapsed into his chair at the head table and sighed. Krolia sat down next to him, much more gracefully, and nudged him. “Hey. It’ll be fine. Ready for your speech?”

Keith pressed his hands to his face and grunted. “I thought I was,” he whispered.

“You better be ready,” Shiro joked, moving to sit next to him – his face was rosy with delight, and his eyes were sparkling in a way Keith hadn’t seen in a long time. “If you give a bad speech, I’ll hit you with the metal arm.”

The joke made Keith feel looser inside, and he shook his head with a chuckle. Mussed up his hair a little, free from the ponytail it had been confined in during the ceremony, and looked around.

Shiro and Curtis had been the last to enter the room, so everyone was now sitting. He’d prepped a place at the table just next to theirs for Lance (they couldn’t fit him at the head table, of course), but his seat was the only one not filled. It made something anxious and sad worm it’s way into Keith’s throat, but he stood anyway, phone in his left hand and champagne glass in his right.

He cleared his throat, and the room fell silent, all eyes turning to Keith.

Keith hated public speaking. Anyone with a brain cell hated public speaking. But this was for Shiro and Curtis. For his brother and his new brother-in-law. He could do this, Lance or no.

“If I could have your attention,” he called. He glanced back at Alexander, who was waiting with the mic from the DJ booth, and took it in his hand. He raised his glass. “I’d like to give my speech for my brother and my new brother-in-law.”

Applause scattered around the room, and Keith set the champagne down so that he could better hold his phone and the mic at the same time. He cleared his throat, looked down at the notes he’d made, and then looked up again.

Directly across from him, leaning against the wall by the hallway, was Lance. His hands were tucked casually into his pockets, which was normal, but he was in a tux that almost perfectly matched Keith’s. It was a deep, deep blue, almost navy, with dark lapels and a bowtie instead of a tie. The jacket was unbuttoned, casual, and his right foot was kicked up on its toes over his left foot. He gave Keith the smallest, gentlest smile, and Keith felt the wind rush out of him, felt the pressure die.

“Two weeks ago,” Keith started, lowering his phone and keeping his gaze on Lance, “I didn’t think I would be standing here. Two weeks ago, I found out that I couldn’t be in this venue when my brother got married. My car is too old, and I couldn’t take a motorcycle so far, and I _definitely_ don’t have the money to fly. I’m a former college student, after all.”

That got some chuckles, and Keith smiled, relieved. “I was devastated. So devastated, that I decided to go to a _gas station_ and buy a _hot dog_. Do you know how upset you have to be to eat gas station meat?”

More laughter, and Keith found himself bouncing on his toes just a little. “And then a random stranger happened to hear me talking to my brother, and offered to take me cross country, because he was doing his own cross country road trip. I know, I know: “Keith, you should know better than to get in cars with strangers!” But Shiro ENCOURAGED it,” he said accusingly, pointing at Shiro.

Shiro held his hands up, shrugging.

Keith let the chuckles die down and lowered his hand. “And I was cautious. But I’m glad I took the offer. Because I’m standing here. Shiro is the _reason_ I’m standing here. He’s been there for me the second I got out of foster care, even before then. He was there, when we had to move to the middle of nowhere. He’s been there for every broken heart, every cold, flu, medication dose, and in between, there for things I can’t even say,” he said, a lump in his throat. “He came to pick me up from Prom, where I got left by my date for a party that I didn’t want to go to. He was the first one to congratulate me when I graduated college, which was something I never thought I would get to do as a kid.”

Keith took a breath, let it out. “He is the reason I’m standing here today. The least I could do was get in the car with a stranger.” He looked over at the children’s table and pointed his phone at them. “Don’t talk to strangers, kids.”

Lance’s eyes were shining from across the room. Keith smiled at him and turned to Shiro and Curtis fully. “When you met Curtis, I thought for all of five minutes that you’d replace me. And then Curtis did what none of the other guys you liked did – he took me in the same way you had when we first met. Gave me advice, helped me up when I got knocked down, picked me up from the bar once or twice when I needed a ride. Curtis, you make my brother happier than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

Keith tilted his head, lifting his champagne glass once more. “You are for him what he was for me, and vice versa. You are both the sappiest, dopiest couple I’ve ever seen, and also the healthiest one. I am proud and honored to welcome you into the family as my brother.”

He lifted the glass up, tilting it gently. “To my brother and his husband.”

Shiro and Curtis’ eyes were both shining, and that in and of itself was reward enough for Keith. The raucous applause as he downed his champagne was a bonus. There were a few other speeches as Keith sat down – Curtis’ oldest sister, his and Shiro’s moms, Curtis’ parents, and then Alexander reclaimed the mic.

“While we prepare the dinner, I’d like to invite the two grooms out to the dance floor for the first dance, followed by the parent’s dance. After that, the floor is open through dinner and until these jerks decide to kick you out.”

Shiro squeezed his shoulder as he stood and led Curtis out to the dance floor, and Keith would be lying if he said he didn’t tear up during the whole thing.

Shiro and Curtis had decided to switch up the traditional “Bride and Father” and “Groom and Mother” dances, and just replaced them with dancing with both their parents at the same time. It was amusing to watch, to say the least, especially given that Shiro and Keith’s moms were _not_ good at dancing.

While the music was still going, Krolia leaned over. “Your speech was wonderful, honey.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Is that boy you keep staring at Lance, perhaps?”

He flushed and glanced back at Lance, who was clapping politely for the end of the song. “Only if you promise to shut up about it.”

“I’ll shut up about it if you ask him to dance.”

Keith buried his head in his hands. “Mom, I swear to god-”

“Ope, looks like you don’t need to.”

Keith whipped his head up to see Lance easing his way over, smiling effortlessly at people as he brushed past them. More people were crowding onto the dance floor now that the first dances were over, and Lance held out his hand to Keith as he approached. “Dance with me,” he said, much like he had a few days prior, except this time it wasn’t a question.

He would have said yes anyway, Keith realized as he reached out and took Lance’s hand.

Keith didn’t recognize the song that was playing, but Lance clearly did, if the way he was humming it under his breath was any indication. He wrapped his arms around Keith’s shoulders instantly, swaying gently to the soft music and letting Keith take the lead, which he appreciated more than he could articulate.

There were a lot of things he wanted to say, but the first of the thoughts that escaped his lips were, “Where did you get the tux?”

Lance’s smile was bright, and he nodded to Curtis and Shiro, who were dancing with who Keith recognized as Curtis’ nieces. “Curtis, the day you and Shiro went to get yours fitted. He and Shiro were planning it from the moment you agreed to come with me across the country. Different shop, down the street from the bookstore. They wanted to surprise us.”

“That was nice of them,” Keith hummed, realizing with a start that he was swaying to the music without thinking about it. “Um. Where were you for the ceremony?”

Lance rolled his eyes, but the smile was still on his face. “In the back, Curtis’ side. Had to grab Alexander to get them to let me in, because someone forgot to put me on the list of guests.”

He shot a glare at Shiro and Curtis, and they waved sheepishly. Keith could see the way Shiro was smiling, and he flipped him off behind Lance’s back. “Took me a while to get in there, and I didn’t want to distract anyone, so I just kinda hid,” Lance finished.

They stopped talking for a moment, and Lance started singing under his breath. “Right here in this moment, is right where I’m meant to be, here with you, here with me…we gonna talk about last night?”

Keith flinched at the abrupt change of tone, looking up quickly. “I wasn’t sure you wanted to,” Keith admitted. “Thought you were pissed at me.”

“Not mad,” Lance promised, soft. “Just…frustrated. With myself, I think. It’s okay.”

“No, I-”

Lance shook his head, cutting Keith off. “No. It’s okay, Keith. I get it. I do. You have your responsibilities here. I’m proud of you for recognizing that. I’ve always been a go-with-the-flow kind of guy,” he said, swaying purposefully as if to prove his point. “It’s good to know someone who sticks to his guns.”

The song eased out and shifted into something more upbeat, and Lance broke back, hand lingering on Keith’s hip a beat too long as he stared at him. “Dance with me later?” he asked, tilting his head in such a puppy dog way that Keith almost kissed him then and there.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that,” he said instead, and then Lance’s hand was gone, and so was Lance.

~~

They danced a few more times throughout the night, and each time Lance and Keith were both progressively more drunk. Keith danced with Krolia, with Shiro and Curtis, some of Curtis’ nieces (were they his nieces now? Keith had never known how that worked), and his adoptive mothers, who were both VERY enthusiastic about Lance existing.

By the time he and Lance got home that night, via Uber (Krolia brought Lance’s car back for him), he was so drunk he couldn’t quite stand straight. Shiro and Curtis were at a hotel for the night and would be coming back in the morning to see Lance off and pack for their honeymoon, so he, Lance, and the pets had the house to themselves.

After Krolia left, making them both promise to drink water and not die, both men trudged up the stairs, Kosmo and Noir bouncing up the stairs after them. They’d been cooped up alone since the morning – Krolia had taken Kosmo out so he wouldn’t get lost via drunken 25 year old – and were ecstatic to have people back in the house.

Keith flopped onto the bed and, to his surprise, Lance flopped down next to him. They’d both removed their jackets and shoes at the door, vests going with them, and Lance had rolled up his shirt sleeves to the elbow hours ago while dancing. It was hot.

“No, you’re hot,” Lance grumbled, and Keith realized sluggishly that he’d said that last part out loud.

“Oh my god I _am_ ,” Keith groaned, rolling off the bed and stripping out of the suddenly stifling hot outfit. He had the mind to leave his boxers on, but otherwise collapsed back into bed without anything else on. Lance squinted at him, then stood and did the same, pulling on a t-shirt with a little halfhearted coordination that ended with him nearly face planting into the floor.

He crawled back onto the bed and flopped next to Keith. “Probably shouldn’t have had that last mimosa,” Lance groaned, pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes.

Keith snorted. “Who drinks mimosas at the night time?” he asked.

“Me, dumbass. Shuddup.”

They looked at one another and then burst into giggles, harder than Keith could remember laughing in a long time. He rolled as he laughed, so that he and Lance were facing each other, and he tucked his hand under his head. “’m glad you came,” he murmured.

Lance’s eyes were bright. “Me too. Thank you for inviting me.”

“Thank you for existing.”

“Thank _you_ for existing.”

That sent them into another round of giggles, and when they relaxed, Lance yawned, big. “Mind if I cuddle? Or izzat not allowed?”

Keith opened up his arms.

~~

**_Day Thirteen - Ground Zero_ **

He woke up when Lance crawled out of bed and started getting dressed, quiet. Keith laid there for a moment, just watching, missing the warmth he’d had all night. His head ached, and he knew if he stood up he’d probably want to vomit, but for the moment, he was pretty okay.

“Getting an early start?” he asked softly, wincing when Lance jumped. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Lance whispered, turning and studying Keith. “Yeah. Heard the front door open, so I’m assuming Shiro and Curtis are back. That or they’re being robbed.”

Keith gave a faint smile and watched as he started stuffing clothes into his bag, folding up pieces of the tux carefully to go alongside it. A thought occurred to Keith, and he leaned up on an elbow. “Did you pay for that yourself?”

The smile Lance shot him was an answer in and of itself, and Keith could only stare. “Those are expensive.”

Lance shrugged. “I’ll get multiple uses out of it. And it was cheaper since they knew the tailor. No big. I know you said they were struggling a little money wise. Couldn’t let Curtis pay for it when I have the extra cash.”

Keith continued to stare, only moving when Lance zipped up his bag fully. He pulled on a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans, stuffing his hands into the sweatshirt pockets as he and Lance sized each other up. “I’ll uh…walk you to the door then.”

Kosmo, who had been laying on the bed, picked his head up, like he was suddenly aware that Lance was ready to go and Keith wasn’t. He boofed, tilting his head in a question, and Lance scratched him behind the ears and dropped a kiss on his head. “Be good, you smelly little rat,” he muttered.

“How dare you call him a rat,” Keith said, though there was no malice in his words, and he knew Lance knew it.

“I was talking about you,” Lance teased.

Keith shoved him as they walked out of the bedroom and headed for where he knew Curtis and Shiro were waiting in the living room for them. Paused on the landing, and turned to Lance. “Um. Good luck. Text me, when you get to your next hotel.”

Lance gave him an easy smile, but Keith could see the ache in his eyes. “I will. And send me updates on cat sitting, house sitting, Kosmo, life…whatever. Just…keep in touch,” he whispered, looking anxious.

Keith’s gut twisted, and he dragged Lance into a hug before he could convince himself not to, ducking his nose into his neck and clinging on tight. Lance held back just as hard, fingers clutching at Keith’s sweatshirt, and when Keith let go, it was with physical pain. “Drive safe,” he managed to choke out.

Lance lifted his hand in a halfhearted wave, gave him a smile, and then lifted his suitcase and walked down the stairs.

~~

Keith held his coffee mug tightly as he watched Lance from the window of the second floor coffee nook. Watched him double check all of his bags, pat down his pockets, and then start closing up the doors to his van. At his feet, Kosmo whined, nosing at the window with a pitiful whimper, and Keith’s throat tightened.

“You can go, you know.”

Keith startled, looking back at Shiro. He was watching him from where he was leaned against the bar table, his own coffee cup in his hands that he must have gotten from downstairs. “What?” Keith managed, heart pounding.

Shiro pushed off the table, motioning his cup towards Lance, who was now leaning against the car and laughing at something Curtis had said. “You can go with him.”

Keith clenched his jaw and looked down at his mug. “No. I’m house sitting for you. And cat sitting. I’m not gonna leave you hanging. Besides, I wanted to see you guys when you came back.”

“Keith,” Shiro said in his soft, no-nonsense tone that he only used when he was about to say something deeply personal. “Molly next door can watch Noir – she was looking for a summer job anyway. I’ve never seen you look at a guy the way you look at him. You know you want to go with him. And he wants you to.”

As if he knew they were discussing them, Lance looked up at the window and lifted his hand in a wave, a smile on his face that Keith knew after this long was fake. “I barely know him,” he protested for the hundredth time, but it sounded feeble even to him. He knew it wasn’t true.

“That’s a lie, and you know it.”

Lance said something else to Curtis and then reached his hand out, shaking it firmly and clapping the man on the shoulder. Keith’s breath hitched. “What if I’m scared?” he whispered, finally looking at Shiro, feeling his eyes tear up. “Nothing in my damned life works out, Shiro, nothing _ever_ goes the way I want it to.”

Shiro had set his mug down at some point, and now he reached out and gripped Keith by the shoulders. “You got here, didn’t you?”

Keith swallowed, looking back over his shoulder. Lance had climbed into the driver’s seat and was waving out the window at Curtis, who was now standing on the front porch. “Yeah. I did.”

“Because he wanted you to get here. He sacrificed his trip for you, a complete stranger, out of the goodness of his heart. And you think you don’t deserve to go with someone like that? You don’t think the universe is screaming at you to go, right now?”

Keith let out a sob and pressed his mug into Shiro’s hand, flying for the stairs. Kosmo was hot on his heels.

He leapt off the last six steps and nearly face planted when he hit the floor, but he kept going. He breezed past Curtis, now standing in the living room whooping, and slammed his body into the front door and out onto the porch. Lance was already at the end of the driveway, near turning, and Keith froze.

Kosmo barreled past him then, barking loudly and harshly, and Keith saw Lance look into the side mirror at the sound. His eyebrows lifted and he leaned out the window and stuck his hand out as Kosmo danced up to the door, jumping for his fingers.

Keith took the lull as a sign and started jogging again, heart pounding in his chest. Lance was backing the van up and out of the way of the morning traffic, Kosmo wisely backing away until he’d parked. Lance climbed out of the van, still running, and looked back at Keith in confusion, his hand on the door.

“Did I forget some-”

“Me,” Keith gasped out. “You forgot me,” and then his hands were settling on either side of Lance’s face and he was dragging him in, fingers sliding back to twist in the curls of hair at the base of his neck as he pulled their lips together.

Lance didn’t stop him – he instead settled his hands on Keith’s hips and dragged him flush against him, fingers hooking in his belt loops and lips parting ever so slightly against Keith’s mouth. He pulled back, just a little, studying Keith, and his eyes softened. He lifted a hand and dusted a thumb across Keith’s cheek, swiping a tear from his skin that Keith hadn’t even felt. “Well,” he murmured, eyes searching his face. “That wasn’t what I was expecting.”

“I want to come with you,” Keith whispered before he could lose his nerve. “On the rest of your trip. I-If you still want me to.”

Lance’s right eyebrow lifted and a smirk curled at the edge of his mouth. The tears welling in his eyes betrayed him. “What, you want to listen to me sing Disney songs for 32 more states?”

“Yes,” Keith managed, struggling to fight back more of his own tears. “Yes, I do.”

Lance’s smile softened and he pressed a kiss very gently to Keith’s forehead before stepping back and holding the driver’s door open wide. “Let’s go, then. Just promise me you’re not some kind of murderer?”

Keith laughed, swiping at the tears on his face and feeling a little stupid. “I can’t promise anything.”

Lance’s grin reminded him of the sun – bright, warm, full of life, and a little bit blinding when you were driving into it. Dangerous, full of promise, and the sight of it set him on fire.

Keith was ready to see where it would take him. 

**Author's Note:**

> Ground Zero: a starting point or a base for an activity (such as a relationship, mayhaps). 
> 
> And yes, several of these instances were inspired by experiences me and my girlfriend had before we started dating lol. I never claimed to be original.


End file.
